


We Should Have Each Other With Cream

by Pythia (melancholic_pigeon)



Series: Fate or Something Better [3]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Dom!Jason, F/F, M/M, Multi, Percy Jackson is an unreliable narrator who hates himself, Polyamory, Switch!Will, doing kink under the influence can be very dangerous and is not recommended, kinktober 2019 but with a plot, mood whiplash ahoy capn, refer back to previous works for a general idea of likely themes, soft drug use, sub!Percy, switch!Nico, the venn diagram of kink and therapy has a significant amount of overlap, thirty different aus rolled into one, will update tags as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2020-11-15 07:22:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 46,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20862413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melancholic_pigeon/pseuds/Pythia
Summary: For a second, Jason just looks down at him. Then he dips the brush in the pot again and paints a heart on the left side of Percy’s chest.“...This is the corniest thing you’ve ever done, and that’s saying something.”





	1. Formalwear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Apparently, there’s something irresistible about a top in a suit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://the100kinkmeme.tumblr.com/post/187826462334/hello-soon-will-be-the-holiest-and-most-sacred-of) is the generator that I used, with many thanks! It’s too soon to tell, but I’m having fun. 
> 
> <s>Please don’t take any of these too seriously—they’re going to be short and likely riddled with errors. It’s something of a range-of-motion exercise, but hopefully the results will still be enjoyable to read.</s>
> 
> September 16, 2020: 
> 
> None of that has been true since chapter three! Whoops. When I was a Fandom Newbie, we used to call these "plot bunnies that grew fangs". I still don't know what arcane magic I tapped into and live in fear that I somehow accidentally made a contract with a member of the Fair Folk and they're going to take my firstborn as penance. 
> 
> You'll see me say this a lot, but I'm completely knocked on my ass by the response this self-indulgent, unapologetically melodramatic, gratuitously emotional domestic-fluff kink has garnered. As of right now, this fic has _nine thousand_ (!!!!!) hits. That's a _lot_ of you and I will never be able to show how much I appreciate it. ;_;
> 
> I love hearing from you and I reply to all of my comments (eventually), so talk to me anytime!! I see you, I remember you if you've left kudos, and it makes me so happy I could cry. 💜

“You know this isn’t actually formalwear, right?”

“Shut up, shut up, shut  _ up,”  _ Percy mutters, eyes darting towards the door of the coatroom. “We have, like, five seconds before they come looking for us; now is  _ not _ the time to be debating the intricacies of western dress codes!” 

“You should be  _ glad.  _ Actual formal is a nightmare to get out of. Or did you forget senior prom?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll thank Nico later for putting his groomspeople in suits and ties instead of tuxes, now shut up so I can suck you off before your best-man speech.” 

In the interest of speed, Jason lets Percy get away with it, but makes a mental note to give him shit for it later. At the moment, though, Percy is getting to his knees, and there are much more important things to focus on. 

Like staying upright and resisting the urge to grab Percy’s hair and fuck his throat. Someone’s bound to notice bruised lips—with some luck and strategic mouthwash use, they should at least avoid giving away details, but only if Percy doesn’t come back into the reception hoarse and coughing. 

So Jason manages it, but oh, it’s difficult. 

“Every time.” 

Also important is keeping his voice down. Silence would be safer—he's done it before, and can still manage it if he tries—but Percy’s on his knees and he’s teasing with tiny little flicks of his tongue and grinning like he just won the lottery, and that deserves a reward. 

“Every time I think you can’t possibly be any more of a cockslut, you prove me wrong. Look at you.” 

Percy pulls off to nuzzle at his hip. “Right now, it’s the suit. Not that I’m not a cockslut too, but  _ dude.  _ You look so, so hot. I can’t—I’ve been revved up for  _ eight hours _ . I’m losing my mind here.” 

Before he can even give the order to get back to it, Percy’s obeying it with an enthusiastic whine. He tries to go too deep, take too much, and Jason has to sift fingers through his hair and tighten to stop him. 

“Not now. Use your hands.” 

“Not fair.” 

“I can always go take care of this myself, and leave you to sit here and stew…” 

The look Percy gives him is so livid Jason has to bite down on his sleeve to keep from bursting into laughter. 

“Baby, you know I wouldn’t do that to you without advance warning. Stop trying to glare a hole into my skull.” 

“I know you wouldn’t. If you did, I’d bite you.” 

“You wouldn’t _dare_.” 

(He absolutely would, and they both know it. That’s the point, to induce that devious widening of Percy’s grin, dangerous. Baring his teeth.) 

“ _ Try me. _ ” 

“ _ Fuck _ !” 

So, okay, Jason ends up pulling Percy’s hair and fucking his throat a little. He’ll reason to himself later that he was provoked, but right now nothing matters except the loose set of Percy’s shoulders and the weight of him against Jason’s hip and the way his eyes flutter closed, blissful, when Jason comes in his mouth. 

A moment of silence, a swallow, and weight against his lower belly. Jason runs his fingers through Percy’s hair, slow and lazy. 

“You’re in so much trouble.” He can’t actually muster any venom, but it’s the right thing to say—that much is clear by the way Percy looks up at him and deliberately, purposefully catches the silk of Jason’s boxers between his teeth. 

“I know.” It’s surprisingly mild-sounding given the fabric in his mouth—Percy’s ability to remain casual even in the most extreme of kinky circumstances approaches supernatural. He’d explained it once as being so easily embarrassed he’d become inured to embarrassment, but he doesn’t turn quite so red anymore, and Jason can’t bring himself to miss it when the tradeoff is Percy getting more comfortable in his own skin. 

“You did it on purpose.” 

“When do I ever  _ not _ ?” 

“Good point.” 

But before they can settle into their usual post-coital bullshitting, there’s a pounding on the door to the coat room that startles them both so badly Percy ends up smacking his forehead on Jason’s hipbone. 

“Ow! Fuck, what time is it?” 

“Ten minutes past when we were supposed to start talking,” comes the response, dry but with a note of fondness, from outside the door. 

He takes a second to brush his fingers over Percy’s skin, just to make sure the impact wasn’t serious, before responding. “You have the patience of a saint, Reyna.” 

“She really does,” Percy murmurs, rough and a little sleepy. “I don’t know why she puts up with us.” 

“I don’t think  _ she  _ knows why she puts up with us.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” 

Jason can’t argue—not after the amount of times she’s walked in on them; she’s basically earned an unlimited right to complain—so he doesn’t. He focuses instead on getting his pants done up and his shirt tucked in and his vest buttoned, and gets so lost in it he doesn’t realize Percy’s still on his knees until he feels him staring. 

“So you  _ are  _ going to leave me to stew.” 

It’s a joke, but there’s an edge of truth to it. He can’t go back into the reception like this, still fiercely hard and flushed red, but it seems unfair to expect him to just splash his face and be done with it. He might not be dropping, but he’s tense again; fortunately, once Jason gives himself a second for his brain to reboot, it’s a relatively easy one to fix. 

“No, I’m ordering you to go upstairs and change your boxers, take a shower, do whatever you have to do to compose yourself, and come back down in time for cake. I expect at least one dance from you tonight.” 

He hands Percy the key card to their room, and feels himself relax in a rush at that sudden, dazzling smile. 

“Motivating me with cake is playing on easy.” 

“Who gave you the right to question my difficulty level choices?” 

“Point taken,  _ Sir. _ ” Percy laughs, leaning back on his elbows to let Jason move around him. “You play on whatever mode you want, I’ll go find a save point, and if anyone asks why I sound like I gargled with sandpaper I’ll tell them I took a shot of hot sauce on a dare and choked on it.” 

He’s relaxed and happy and loose again, and it takes more effort than Jason would like to take the opportunity to pull away. 

“You’re lucky you’re reckless enough for that to be convincing.”

“Twelve minutes,” Reyna calls from outside. Percy snickers, wobbling a little as he pushes to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall. 

“Come here. Your tie’s crooked.” 

“Nice try, but I doubt you have the self-control not to start begging if I let you, and I  _ know  _ I don’t have the self-control to say no to you if you do.” 

The smile is still playful, but it’s softer too, with that strange shy delight that still seems to take Percy by surprise every time he’s told how much he’s wanted. 

“Thanks, bossman. That’ll tide me over until later.” 

The opportunity is right there, Percy’s throat bare and exposed by the loosening of his own tie so he could still breathe. The little silver chain glints, just barely, in the dim light. And, well, he does deserve some payback. 

Reyna doesn’t comment on Percy’s hickey or ask Jason how his tie got so askew. She even politely turns away to give them a chance to kiss goodbye, to let Jason mutter a heated promise— _ Do what you want up there, but if you come, you’ll regret it— _ and, once Percy’s on the elevator with that cant to his hips that says he has no intention of being obedient in any possible definition of the word, barely even gives Jason the stink-eye at all. 

“I’d be more annoyed if it hadn’t taken me an hour and a half to get dressed for the same reason. Apparently, there’s something irresistible about a top in a suit.” 

“There’s something irresistible about a  _ person  _ in a suit,” Jason corrects, smirking as he pushes open the door to the ballroom. Piper makes a beeline for them, grabbing Reyna by the tie and pulling her down for a kiss. 

“Fair,” Reyna concedes after, slightly breathless. Really, Jason can’t blame her; Piper has always looked cute butch, and the deep goldenrod of their vests flatters her more than any of them. 

They look happy together like this. All of them—Reyna and Piper by his side, Will and Nico together at the head of the table; people are dancing, Hazel and Frank are chatting amiably with Percy’s parents, and the whole room buzzes with a warm, familiar intimacy. 

“I have a whole pack of them,” Reyna tells him quietly, and it’s not until she closes his fingers around a tissue that he realizes he’s getting misty. 

“I’m fucked, aren’t I?” 

“Totally, but so’s everyone else.” 

“Who do you think will cry first?” 

“Only one way to find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I posted Shut Me Up in August, I was honestly shocked at how much interaction it got. I’m still shocked. 
> 
> I feel kind of awful, actually, since I’d been letting myself get down in the dumps thinking I was mostly sailing my own kayak, and all this time...it turned out not only are you still paying attention, you never actually stopped; I just...failed to check my Ao3 email filter for more than two years. Yeah. That one’s on me. 
> 
> It just means the world to me that people exist who care enough about my self-indulgent universe to pay attention. Every view is one person who read something I wrote, and that’s an honor I’ve failed to appreciate. 
> 
> This is for you. You read something I wrote, and I am so grateful to have you. I would not be doing this without you. Thank you.
> 
> Next up: praise kink.


	2. Praise Kink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re absolutely beautiful. Especially when you’re under me—I could do this for hours and never get bored.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got kind of heavy on me and decided it wanted to be a dive into some of Percy’s hangups. It’s not as glurgy as the last chapter, but the prose is still pretty purple. Haha. (She says as though her stuff ever isn’t.)

“You really do look incredible in red.” 

A breath, shakier than he wants it. Fingertips skating over his rib, a featherlight spiral. Another breath, a moment of silence—

“_Nnhn— _”

—cold, slick, the brush follows the path Jason’s fingers had taken. He remembers the color, remembers _ wearing _that color for the first time, remembers the way Jason turned pink around the ears at the sight of him. 

_ You look incredible. _

“Please.” 

“Too much?” 

Is it? He can’t tell, can barely feel anything in his own head, too focused on his nerves turning to live wires under his skin, jolting him every time Jason makes contact. Then there’s a hand on his thigh, heavy and warm and dragging him back to the surface for some air, and he shakes his head. 

“Nah. Just weird.” 

“Tell me if that changes.” 

A familiar phrase, and a familiar softness in the tone. It’s stabilizing, and Percy feels his shoulders loosen by a hair. 

“Yes, Sir.” 

“Good boy.” 

It’s been a long fucking week for both of them. It started with a call from a lawyer on Friday, informing Percy one of his regulars from his dog-sitting side hustle had passed away and left the dog to him. This necessitated a frantic rearranging of furniture, an impromptu petco run with Nico and Will that ended in almost five hundred bucks’ worth of food and toys and leash harnesses and a bed so big _ he _could probably sleep comfortably in it, and six different phone calls trying to find a vet who was taking new patients and equipped to handle one of gargantuan size. It was a miracle Nico’s wallet was seemingly bottomless, though he’d always been cagey on why, and was liable to claim he’d either killed a man for his vast fortune or taken up stripping. 

Somewhere in that insanity, Percy found a moment to make a fervent prayer of thanks to anyone who was listening that shortly before the wedding, the four of them had taken the plunge and bought a fixer-upper outside the city together, and thus were no longer beholden to breed restrictions.

Mrs. O’Leary is a sweet girl, but she’s also nearly three hundred pounds of shaggy, drooly black mastiff, and Percy had never properly appreciated Jason’s tackle until she almost bowled Estelle over trying to say hello. (Thank goodness, too, that his baby sister had been delighted by her new giant doggy friend and not traumatized for life.) 

But Jason hadn’t paid attention to his landing and hit his bad knee on the crate that was serving as a temporary coffee table, and he’s back to using a cane outside the house with a referral for yet another round of physical therapy, and it’s Percy’s fault he hurt his knee in the first place by having a nervous breakdown the day before a game and making him worry so much he—

“Hey. Stop that.” 

Firm, commanding, but somehow still gentle. Just like it had been this morning when he’d been putting a reassuring hand on the back of Percy’s neck. _ It’s not your fault; I’m just a hypocrite when it comes to reckless self-endangerment. _

As badly as he wants to just let the storm surge of guilt sweep over him, he can’t. Not when Jason’s looking at him like that. 

“Working on it.” 

“I know. I’m proud of you.” 

“Working on not knee-jerking to asking you why.” 

Jason smiles, and the expression lightens some of the oppressive anxiety in the atmosphere. Any further relaxation is stalled, though, by the paint swirling over his chest and up his shoulder, but this time the tension is anticipatory of further sensation. 

“That’s a big improvement from last week.” 

“Yeah, well, last week I was—”

“Coming down off the initial clusterfuck, I know. I never said it wasn’t understandable.” A pause, probably to load the brush again. For some reason, Percy suddenly finds himself unable to look away from the ceiling. 

“I’m working on it,” he repeats. The brush comes back, down his hip and the inside of his thigh, the chill making him gasp. 

“Better?” 

It takes a second to follow. Jason helps him out by running a finger over the underside of Percy’s dick, almost fully hard again. 

“Yeah. Temperature.” 

“Do you want me to grab some ice?” 

The thought is so panic-inducing it blacks out his vision for a second. But he trusts Jason, and Jason trusts _ him _ to communicate, as much as that prospect is almost as terrifying. 

“If you leave me alone right now, I will piss on the damn radiator.” 

“How are you gonna get to the radiator when you’re tied to the bed?” 

“I’ll chew my arm off.” 

“Alright, point taken.” 

The banter’s like hitting a reset button. Jason seems aware of this too, and rather than continue what he was doing he takes Percy into his mouth instead. 

“_Fuck.” _

The heat feels a thousand times more intense after the cold paint. It takes a little longer than usual to get him wound up, but Jason patiently works him through it, slow, deliberate and intensely focused. By the time he pulls back, Percy’s shaking, and the anxiety feels insubstantial and irrelevant. 

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Teeth set into his thigh, the one that’s still bare from paint. Obligingly, Percy whimpers. 

“_Please_.” 

Will and Nico are upstate on a camping trip and took Mrs. O’Leary with them, so it’s not like he’s going to interrupt anyone’s beauty sleep, and like hell is he going to miss an opportunity to make Jason growl like that, low in his throat. 

“I’m just getting started.” A stripe of paint across his lower belly, and Percy feels himself twitch. “And I know you can take it, and _ you _know I’ll make it worth your while.” 

By _ take it_, there’s a strong chance he means more than just the teasing. That assurance of faith is grounding too, and like everything else that affords him stability, Percy mentally grabs onto it with both hands. 

“Again.” 

“When I'm done with this.” 

Which turns out to be Percy’s left side from knee to rib. It takes five minutes or eight hours. It’s not until Jason chuckles, smoothing a hand over Percy’s arm, that he realizes he was arching off the mattress. 

“_Please.” _It comes out strangled, and that, as usual, makes Jason go a little devious. 

“Don’t fuck up the paint,” he warns. _ With jizz _goes unsaid, and Percy can’t help but smirk. 

“I make no promises.” 

This time, Jason uses his hand, and Percy realizes why when he starts talking. 

“Even if you do, I’m not going to punish you for it.” A twist, a slow firm pull, lips against his ear—when did Jason move up the mattress? It doesn’t matter. 

“Why not?” 

“Because this isn’t about perfect obedience, it’s about you trying anyway regardless of the outcome.” 

His voice is rough and humid, and his hand is hot and agonizingly familiar with every kind of pressure that makes Percy squirm, and he’s on the kind of mission he can’t be pulled away from with wild horses. 

“All I want from you is to give it your best shot. At the end of the day, that’s the only thing that actually matters.” 

Another twist and Percy’s almost there, but before he can even open his mouth to give warning Jason stops. (Knows him well enough to know exactly when to do so; that realization makes him pulse in Jason’s grip and leak over his knuckles.) 

“_Please! _” 

“Patience is a virtue. One you have a lot more of than anyone, including you, gives you credit for.” 

He wants to argue back, the assertion on the tip of his tongue that it’s more spite than patience, but he’s cut off with a deep kiss. 

“I’ll try,” he whispers once it’s broken, and he feels Jason smile against his lips. 

“That’s all I want.” 

“I know. Evil Jason’s off-duty.” 

“You’ll see him soon enough.” 

He does, about three seconds later, in fact, as Jason swirls more paint over the insides of Percy’s thighs, agonizingly close to his dick. 

“I take it back. Sadist. Evil Jason’s never really off-duty, is he?” 

“Consider it a collaborative effort.” 

“Torturing me with kindness for your amusement and my own benefit?” 

“Exactly.” 

The brush drags over the inside of Percy’s hip and he bucks against the ticklishness, something Jason apparently approves of, since he responds by using his mouth again. 

This time, it takes barely any effort at all before Percy’s whimpering again, the movement of his hips frantic and outside his control. Jason again pulls off without being told, and smirks at the urgent whine. 

“Come _ on!” _

“In a minute. There’s one more spot I want to get first.” 

For a second, Jason just looks down at him. Then he dips the brush in the pot again and paints a heart on the left side of Percy’s chest. 

“...This is the corniest thing you’ve ever done, and that’s saying something.”

“You knew exactly what you were getting into from the day you met me.” 

“Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.” 

“Just reminding you this is a hell of your own making.” 

Jason’s situated himself alongside Percy—he’s had to be a little creative with positioning all night, given he can’t kneel even on a soft surface just now—and it puts him in the perfect position to run his free hand through Percy’s hair. The touch is distracting enough to steal whatever retort he’d wanted to fire back, triply more so when Jason puts down the brush and takes hold of his cock. 

“You deserve it, you know.” 

His hands are still callused like they’d been in college, but not nearly as much so since he stopped actively playing. It’s familiar but entirely different, nothing like doing it alone—somehow even better at reading Percy than Percy is. 

“Corny romance, I mean. Attention. Affection. Verbal affirmation.” 

“Please.” 

“Look at me.”

It’s usually a demand, but just now it lands as a request—paradoxically, that makes it so much harder to resist. The terror clawing up his throat is well worth the expression on Jason’s face, though, tender and intimate and utterly adoring. 

“_Please_.” 

“You’re absolutely beautiful. Especially when you’re under me—I could do this for hours and never get bored.” 

“I’d cry,” Percy breathes. “I’d let you, but I’d cry.” 

It’s supposed to be a joke, but it doesn’t come out as one. Jason’s still looking at him like he’s the most wonderful thing in the universe, and he can barely breathe, but there’s a hand in his hair and another pumping his cock and he’s somehow managing to get in enough air or he wouldn’t be making such a needy-sounding racket—

“You’re beautiful when you’re crying, too.” 

It catches in Percy’s throat. He falls silent, the fight long banked in him by the crushing weight of his insecurity. There’s nowhere to hide from it like this—he can’t even turn to bury his face in the pillow with his left wrist bound to one of the D-rings on the headboard. Jason used his tie to do it, the same black one he wore to Nico’s wedding, and Percy can feel his pulse fluttering against the silk.

“Percy. Look at me.” 

The sound of his name draws him back; the repeat of the earlier command has him trembling, but forcing his eyes open. He can’t even remember closing them. That large hand moves from his hair to his cheek, brushing away moisture—and when the _ fuck _did he start actually crying? 

“Please.” He’s not even sure what he’s begging for anymore, brainpower fully occupied by coping with the physical sensation on top of the emotional turmoil. “Jason, _ Please.” _

Anything. He’d let Jason do anything to him, and the realization is terrifying. 

But the actual presence of the guy next to him goes a long way towards keeping Percy moored, and while he might not be able to reach the pillow, he _ is _close enough to bury his face in Jason’s chest. From here, he can feel Jason’s heart hammering too, just as hard as his own. 

Grip tightening, strokes speeding up—everything tenses and Jason curls in closer, presses his mouth to Percy’s hair, fuck, harder—“You’ve been so good, you’ve more than earned a reward for it. Come for me, and don’t hold back. I want to hear you.” 

When they’re doing a scene like this, by the time they reach this point they’ve been going at it long enough that Percy’s well past losing his drive to do anything but obey. Tonight is no different—all Jason has to do is say the word ‘come’ and Percy’s gone, twisting violently against the silk tying him down and muffling an embarrassing amount of noise in Jason’s skin. And, fuck, the peak lasts longer than it has in months, with nothing more than a skilled hand. 

By the time he’s done with the aftershocks, he’s so wrung out he can’t be bothered to stop himself from giving over to the tears. Like always, Jason’s right there to hold him and rub his back and murmur comforts into his hair.

“I’m so proud of you. You did so well. You always do so well for me.” 

A tissue, a bottle of water, a kiss. It’ll take a while to come down, but since that night with the plug and cage Jason’s made a point to stay physically present until the flood of emotion abates, and as much as it makes Percy’s head hurt from the dehydration and the tension in his neck, as humiliating as it is to break down like this…

He’s not alone. He’s never alone; not anymore. 

“I love you.” 

There’s so much else he wants to say, but it won’t sort itself into words. It still makes his chest seize up a little, especially now when he’s still so raw, but he has to say _ something_, and it’s the only phrase that even comes close to what he needs to convey. 

“I love you so much.” 

But Jason doesn’t actually need to hear it. Sure, it makes him smile, but so does Percy wrapping arms around him from behind and cracking stupid jokes. He doesn’t need any more than that, it seems, and yet every time it sends Percy into a tailspin—this is one of the only ways he can handle it, when he’s already so wrecked it doesn’t matter. 

It’s easier with a hand in his hair and a warm body to tuck into. He doesn’t have to look Jason in the eye now that everything’s over, and he doesn’t have to say a word for Jason to undo the tie and pull him in as close as he can get. 

“I know, baby.” A mouth against his temple, a soft kiss. “I’ve never doubted it. Not once.” 

“Even when I can’t spit it out.” 

“_Especially _when you can’t spit it out—it tells me you’re trying to, even though it terrifies you. Why would you put yourself through that if you didn’t love me?” 

Percy again wants to argue that it isn’t anything exceptional to push past bullshit walls he shouldn’t have built up in the first place, but can’t bring himself to. As much as it freaks him out, he’s spent enough time having his head shrunk to recognize that the fear comes from a place of desperate wanting, that it’s more about potential rejection than anything else. 

But Jason’s still there, even though Percy’s getting snot on his chest. That presence, that closeness seeps into him, warming him to his bones, and it just makes him cry harder. 

Apparently that’s normal too—that it took being sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jason meant what he said to process the fear that he didn’t, but it still sucks and makes his head hurt and feels a little like cleaning out a wound with isopropyl alcohol.

“I hate this part.” 

“I know you do. But you’re talking, so you’re probably halfway through it already.”

If anyone knows him well enough, has paid close enough attention to know the pattern his subdrop takes, it’s Jason, who still hasn’t moved away even though his shoulder must be cramping, or said a word about his erection—Percy can feel it against his thigh, rigid; it must be uncomfortable, maybe bordering on painful. 

He’s barely lifted his hand to reach over when Jason stops him, fingers circling his wrist. 

“It can wait.” Jason rubs gently at the pulse point in Percy’s wrist, a slow, steady pressure. 

“What if I don’t want it to?”

The why is too close to home to think about in detail—that’s for every other Thursday with Brunner and his kind brown eyes—but the idea of Jason going off somewhere and not letting Percy reciprocate makes him want to hurl. Like he’s unneeded, unimportant, discarded, not even worth being used for Jason’s relief. 

Jason knows that, though, and pulls him closer with a smirk that looks just a shade more playful.

“Then I’ll let you, but I was hoping to wait until you‘re ready again so I can fuck you until you scream. We won’t have an empty house for very long, and I intend to take advantage of it.” 

All that tension releases in a second, like bursting a water balloon with a pin. The laughter comes out semi-hysterical. 

“Dude, how are you going to fuck me when you fucked up your fucked-up knee keeping the dog from flattening my sister and can barely put weight on that leg?” 

That smirk widens into a grin, and Jason reaches up and grabs Percy’s hair, pulling tight. 

“You’ll just have to do the work, won’t you.”

Which means riding him, and Jason knows full well it’s Percy’s second-favorite position, but he also knows enough not to push the idea in words—remembers how much easier it is when he frames it as a command rather than granting a request. 

That’s all it takes—well, that and the fact that he’s twenty-five—to get his dick stirring with interest again. Jason sits up, leaning back against the pillows, and holds out an inviting hand. It’s the easiest and most comforting thing in the world to take it and swing a leg over Jason’s hip, somehow even easier to ready himself and sink down. 

“Fuck,” Percy mutters, pressing his forehead to the side of Jason’s neck. There’s a hand in his hair, like usual, and another firm on his lower back, keeping him in his place, and it’s such a relief he can’t think of the verbiage to describe it. 

“Be my guest.”

The joke interrupts the overwhelming intimacy, and Percy can’t help it—he bursts into laughter again, too exhausted to try to hold it back. 

“Much obliged, Sir.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I noticed when I was reading the later volumes of Heroes of Olympus that Annabeth is almost always the one to say it in words—Percy tends to show it in grandiose gestures and flashing neon lights, but rarely drops it verbally, and based on his childhood I could see it becoming a bona fide Thing for him. 
> 
> So I took it and ran with it and now there’s a fic that’s more than twice as long as the last one. Oops. 
> 
> Next up is sharing. 
> 
> Thanks again for the love, aaah ❤️


	3. Sharing (nonsmut)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico tastes copper. Will’s going to be pissed, but at least it isn’t actually his doing this time. Mostly. 
> 
> “I’m telling my husband you bit me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops. 
> 
> !!eta November 8: now with 1k+ more words at the end. Sorry about that. >_>; 
> 
> Thanks to unwrittengold, who is much more comfortable with Nico and Will than I am and whose input on characterization has been immensely helpful. ♥️
> 
> I’m not thrilled with this? But I’m sick of writing myself in circles and the whole point is to post sketches, so I’m allowing myself to even though it’s rough. Very, very rough. And there's no actual smut. But fuck it, it's over a week into November and I don't care anymore. :D
> 
> Content warnings for brief mentions of canine bodily functions in the first few paragraphs and marijuana use/mentions of throughout.

It’s not the first road trip they’ve taken—not even the first one this _ year, _ after their honeymoon driving to San Francisco to visit Hazel and Frank—but it’s the first one they’ve taken with a canine companion, and _ lord _if she doesn’t turn it into a completely different experience. 

The best part is the play. Out in the woods, they can be as rough as they want—at least, up to physical injury—can let her bark as loud as she pleases, run as far and fast as their stamina will take them. 

The worst part is the clean-up. Mrs. O’Leary takes shits bigger than _ Will _does, which makes sense given how much she outweighs him, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t disgusting, and Nico’s less than sympathetic to his plight. 

“What’s the difference between this and a really gross bedpan?”

“You don’t have to pick up the contents of a bedpan with your _ hands _. It’s a very important distinction.” 

“I’ll get the next one. Maybe use some leaves, so there’s another layer between you and the bag?” 

“You see, this is why I married you.” 

“What, because I’m willing to go halvsies on cleaning up our massive dog’s massive poops?” Nico snorts, but he’s smiling too, and Will feels a warm, shimmery fluttering in his chest. 

“No, because you’re a genius who reminds me leaves exist.”

“I _ am _an earth sign, so I’m at one with nature and stuff.” 

Nico’s been kind of into astrology lately, and it’s Percy’s fault. A month or so into living together, he’d talked enough about how Jason’s Cancer sun was balanced out by his Aries moon and Virgo ascendant that Nico had gotten fed up and started doing research, and now they’re something of a monster together, exchanging conspiratorial smirks and muttering about air signs whenever Will does something one of them doesn’t like. 

“You’re a regular Davy Crockett. What’s more natural than the process of decomposition?” 

“I haven’t even gotten into med school yet. It’ll be a long time before I work with any human remains.” 

“Whatever you say, Death Boy. That consistent dean’s list thing must be a fluke.” 

Okay, so the best part is actually when all three of them wind down, dog business taken care of, and Will can stare at Nico staring up at the stars, and the view is so stunning he doesn’t even care that his leg has fallen asleep from the weight of Mrs. O’Leary’s head. 

But it’s also a lot harder to mess around when there’s a witness, even a furry one, and Will’s looking forward to spilling Nico onto their bed and holding his wrists down and riding him until they’re both exhausted from satisfaction. So naturally, they’re almost home when his phone rings. 

“Hey, man, how far away are you guys?” 

Percy’s voice sounds a little desperate and a _ lot _worried, so Will swallows the complaint he’d been working on and switches to speakerphone instead. 

“Dunno. We just passed Rye, but there might be traffic when we get closer to the city.” 

“Shouldn’t be terrible,” Nico adds, glancing at the mirror as he changes lanes to one with a higher speed. “We’re well under rush hour, still. What’s wrong?” 

“The big guy’s really hurting.” There’s a huff from the phone, still exasperated even through the tinniness of it. “He couldn’t sleep last night, so I rolled a master joint with the last of our roaches, but now we’re dankrupt and it’s starting to wear off.” 

“Let me guess. He’s insisting the aspirin is sufficient, but he’s still grimacing every time he moves his leg and hoping you won’t notice he hasn’t borne weight since lunch.” 

“Got it in one.” Percy’s rolling his eyes—that dry tone of voice never means anything but. “He’s been pouting since I picked up the phone—babe, don’t give me that, you’re pouting and you know it—but he hasn’t tried to fight me on it at all, he’s just complaining about my word choices regarding his facial expressions.” 

“Which tells me everything _ I _need to know.” Nico scowls, the one that means he’s just as worried as Percy. Will’s kept a running catalog of them since freshman year, and has them all down by heart. “We’ll swing by Grover’s and be back with dinner before seven.”

“And make sure he remembers his RICE,” Will adds, grinning at Nico’s smirk in profile when Percy snorts. 

“Rest, ice, compression, elevation, I _ know _. I’m the one who moved in with him after surgery. He’s already got his brace on and I’m making him lie on the couch with three pillows under his foot while we wait for the cold pack to finish freezing.”

“What do you want for takeout?” 

“Burgers,” comes the response from Jason—Percy must have turned on his speaker, too. “Please. Something with sour cream and fried pickles, if possible.” 

He sounds a little out of it, but it seems more from discomfort than being stoned. Nico starts worrying at his lip, but he stops when Percy bursts into laughter. Which is good, because they’ve been taking turns driving since eight in the morning and Will really isn’t in the mood to lecture him about biting himself bloody from anxiety. Again. 

“I always forget that Sunshine has the tolerance of a baby mouse, so I had to bring him down with some bright colors and I figured it was as good a time as any to make him watch Bob’s Burgers. Which worked, but it also gave him hella munchies, and the look on his face when I told him that nobody near us would deliver at two in the morning was _ heartbreaking. _ Please send help and grease.” 

“Before seven,” Nico repeats. “With the closest approximation of a ‘Baby You Can Chive My Car’ burger we can find, some of Grover’s produce and a bully stick for Mrs. O’Leary so she doesn’t feel left out and try to steal our food. As much.”

“We have that huge bucket of liver treats too, just in case. And tell her I said hi.” 

Will reaches into the back seat and scratches her ear, which makes her bark, loud and booming in Nico’s PT cruiser. 

“She says hi back, I think. Make sure you sober up before ten tomorrow; I’m going to need help wrangling her at baby’s first vet appointment.” 

“You say that like she’s not _ my _ baby.” 

“She’s _ our _baby, thank you very much, and I have no intention of giving up my fourth of a claim.” 

“To be fair, Percy’s the one she likes to follow around. Probably a little less than a fourth.”

“More would be better,” Percy deadpans, somehow audibly. “Between Zombie Dude and I, we’ll go through a half in a month.” 

“That’s true. You’re both closer to moose than mice.” 

“Ha ha. Hilarious.” 

“But not wrong,” Percy adds, and Nico shakes his head. There’s something on his face, reminiscent of the way he used to get lost in thought, but after a second it’s gone. 

“Go check the cold pack before you get Will started on bad cannabis puns.” 

“You’re not the boss of me,” Percy chirps back. Somewhere in the background, Will can hear Jason laughing. If they were in the same room, Nico would probably be trying harder to suppress that grin, but Will gets to see things Nico has never shown anyone else, and that knowledge makes his stomach flutter. 

“Knock it off with your Leo bullshit and let us drive, fishface.” 

“He’s sticking out his tongue, just so you know.” 

“Jason. Dude. It’s ‘_ rice’, _ with an ‘r’, for ‘ _ rest’. _ Quit moving around or you’re _ both _in trouble when we get back.” 

“He’s on the couch with me, I just stole his phone—” 

But then Jason makes an unhappy bitten-off sound too much like a whimper, and Percy hangs up with a sympathetic hiss and a _ gotta-go, see-you-soon. _After that, the ride is maybe a little less fun, but nothing can be truly awful if Nico’s there to make acerbic commentary and insist on using the CD player instead of Will’s Spotify subscription. 

“Someday, the internet will explode, and I’ll still have all of my music and I’ll laugh in your face.” 

“Not if the power grid goes too, you won’t.” 

“I’ll build a generator with potatoes and tinfoil.” 

“How will you find a potato big enough to power a freaking generator?” 

“Earth sign. Force of will.” 

“_ Borf! _” Mrs. O’Leary adds helpfully.

They argue for half an hour over who she was agreeing with, until the next rest stop sees her immediately nosing at Nico’s rib, huge tongue lolling with bliss when his bony fingers scratch behind her ears. 

“Fine, you win, she likes me least,” Will grumbles as he slides behind the wheel. 

“I don’t know about _ least _. She seemed pretty miffed at Jason when he wouldn’t let her mow Stella down.” 

Estelle Marie Blofis is eight years old, tiny, looks just like her brother and has a desperate crush on Nico, which is frankly hilarious considering the history, but Will certainly can’t blame her for it. He’s a sucker for the Italian pet names too (_ caro mio _ in his case), to say nothing of the soulful brown eyes or quiet, carefully-guarded charm. 

“When you put it that way, it sounds a lot better. I can deal with third.” 

Will can’t see the expression on Nico’s face—he’s a way better driver than his father as a point of pride, and part of that is avoiding distractions, no matter how stunningly attractive—but based on the available information and previous behavior, he can guess. Probably fond, probably much softer than he’d like, probably breathtaking. 

“Oh yeah?”

Two simple words, but the silky sound of Nico’s voice warms like fresh crema, and Will knows from experience how easily it can make losing sound equally appealing. 

“I like bronze. Bronze is a good color. Less pressure, but still a commendation.” 

“Less pressure on me as your spouse, too. I wouldn’t want the scrutiny that comes with being married to a champion or runner-up.” 

It’s been less than two months, so everything is still new enough that thinking about it makes the ring feel pleasantly hot and solid on his finger, and he can’t even be bothered to complain when Nico vetoes his music choices. 

They get lost trying to find the highway again—camping is one thing, but why Grover and Juniper insist on _ living _ in the middle of the fucking woods is anyone’s guess—and by the time they do, the traffic is so nightmarish they’re gridlocked in Brooklyn for two hours, broken up by intermittent, pointless and increasingly frantic phone calls from Percy demanding updates. All told, it’s not until almost nine-thirty that the peeling paint and rickety porch of their house comes into view.

No sooner have they tumbled out of the car, laden down with hot bags of takeout and piles of camping equipment, than Percy’s out the front door to greet them, so keyed up he’s practically vibrating. 

“Not that I didn’t miss you, but gimme.” He grabs the repurposed tea tin out of Nico’s hand, pecks him on the corner of the mouth and races back inside so fast, the dog on his heels for a pat he hasn’t stopped to give her, Will half expects to see trails of smoke behind them. 

“That’s not good.” 

“Keep in mind how prone Percy is to awfulizing, but it’s certainly not ideal.” 

“I’ve never seen him straight-up ignore her before.” 

“That’s the concerning part. And that she isn’t sulking out here with us.” 

“She’s trained as a service dog, right? She can probably smell his anxiety.”

“_ I _ can smell his anxiety.” Nico makes a face that’s almost identical to the one Percy met them with, and he’s biting his lip again, and in the interest of not reopening wounds and looking like a vampire the next time they make out, Will firmly takes the backpack from Nico’s hands. 

“Go bring the food inside and check up on them, and I’ll unload everything important. Most of the gear can stay in the car until tomorrow.” 

Thankfully, a good portion of that tension slips away and Nico smiles in something that looks genuine, reaching over to run chilly fingers over Will’s cheek and bring him in for a kiss. 

“Ti amo, caro.” 

“I know. Now move, the burgers are going to get cold and you’re starting to make _ me _antsy.” 

Nico makes it halfway up the porch steps before he stops to shoot a slow, rakish smile over his shoulder, heavy with promise. 

Or maybe a threat. With Nico, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. 

“You’re not the boss of me,” he purrs, and it hits the base of Will’s spine, hot and tight. 

“We’ll see how you feel when I’m on top of you later.” 

“_ If _ you’re on top of me later _ .” _

So it’s that kind of night—of course, it’s not _ any _kind of night until they all touch base, but the prospect is enough to make Will shiver and put a little bit of spring in his step. 

—

“I can’t find my bowl. Please tell me you have papers somewhere in the batcave you call a study.” 

Percy, as expected, doesn’t even let Nico open his mouth upon entering the living room. He’s still rattling like a pinball, his hands twisting and untwisting the empty grinder, knee jerking in time with the tapping of his foot, and it doesn’t take long to figure out why. 

Jason is lying supine on the couch, staring up at the ceiling and looking as pallid and tense as a corpse in rigor mortis. Nico’s stomach lurches. 

“I’ll do you one better. Davy’s clean.” 

At the mention of the tentacle-shaped blown-glass water pipe he got Nico for his bachelor party, Percy slumps over the arm of the couch with a shaky exhale, buries his face in Jason’s shoulder and reaches blindly back with one hand until Nico takes it and lets him squeeze hard enough to hurt. 

“Bless you. It’s been _ hell _.”

“I think you need it more than I do, and you’re not even the one who re-tore his ACL.” Jason manages an impressively close approximation of a smile, but it doesn’t last; Percy chases it away with a whine so distraught it makes the dog paw gently at his upper leg. 

“It’s worse for me, since I have to deal with you being in excruciating pain _ and _ it being my fault _ .” _

“Can and will punch you,” Nico reminds him gently. He doesn’t look up, but Jason shoots over a grateful look and rests his hand on the back of Percy’s neck. 

“Let Nico tag in, babe,” he murmurs, just loud enough to be heard by all of them. “Why don’t you go get the pipe ready? He can keep me company while you’re upstairs, and when you come back, you can set up the next episode for us.” 

After a second, Percy lifts his head, his smirk looking worn out and dim, but at least present. 

“You _ do _suck at working hulu.” 

“It’s not my fault every streaming service has a different interface.” 

“You’re good at other things that don’t involve spatial reasoning. Like calming me the fuck down when I get like this.” 

He pushes off the back of the couch and goes for the stairs. Nico’s halfway to the pomegranate-crate-slash-coffee table when Percy changes course to catch him about the waist and drag him in. 

“Don’t know what I’d do without you, either,” Percy whispers. “Managing my bullshit is a multi-person job.”

Nico tastes copper. Will’s going to be pissed, but at least it isn’t actually his doing this time. Mostly. 

“I’m telling my husband you bit me.” 

“Barely. Definitely not hard enough to draw blood. And you rag on _ me _for being self-destructive when I’m anxious.” 

“Torn ACL,” Jason cuts in, but thank fucking heaven he doesn’t look quite so close to expiring when he says it. That smile, tense as it is, is a real one, and from the sigh and loosening of the arm slung around Nico, even Percy noticed. 

“Ten minutes, provided I don’t get stuck in Brooklyn at rush hour.” 

Mrs. O’Leary hot on his heels, Percy barrels up the stairs with the grace and poise of a startled rhino. For a moment, the sounds of his footsteps overhead are the only noise. Then Jason bursts into laughter and Nico can’t help but follow, sinking to the floor next to the couch. 

(Percy’s convinced Jason exudes an aura that makes people instinctively want to defer to him, to let him take point or have the higher ground, to listen and do what he says. Some days, Nico thinks he’s onto something.) 

“Sorry about that. He’s more worked up over this than I am.” 

“Percy? Worked up over something? Must be a day of the week,” Nico deadpans, just to make Jason laugh again. 

“He’s not exactly off-brand, is he?” 

“In his defense, it’s hard to watch someone you love suffer when there’s nothing you can do about it. Makes you feel pretty useless.” 

“Believe me, I know.” Jason sighs, the levity dissipated, and runs a hand over his face. His glasses are folded neatly, right over a logo for a nearby farm. “I just wish he would stop beating himself up over it.” 

“Losing battle.” 

“I wish I had the energy to beat him up a little so he didn’t have to do it solo. At least I pay attention to his limits.” 

“I wish _ you _would stop beating yourself up over Percy beating himself up. We can’t all have this problem and leave poor Will hanging.” 

“Speaking of, where _ is _Will? You didn’t leave him in Flushing to fight off a taxi or something, did you?” 

“I’m on the porch, I just had to swap hands.” 

At the sound of that bright voice, a familiar spike of guilt knocks the breath out of Nico’s lungs—_ what am I doing, neglecting my husband for my boyfriend's boyfriend— _but as always, Will isn’t fazed in the slightest, and when he scowls, it’s at the bags Nico had forgotten he was holding. 

“Wasn’t the point _ not _ to let these get cold? Geez. We go through all the trouble to find a dive willing to custom-make a burger with sour cream, chives and fried pickle wheels and you get so angsty you both forget about it entirely.” 

“Wait, seriously?” Jason’s dark eyebrows shoot halfway up his forehead. “You got the pickles and everything? Where?” 

The pure, vibrant lightness of that smile reminds Nico of the pet name Percy chose—_ you, sir, are a ray of sunshine. _Sure, the initial usage was an ironic assessment of Jason being pragmatic to the point of pessimism, but over the years it’s become increasingly obvious how genuinely fitting it is. 

Will ruffles Nico’s hair, sending sparks cascading down his neck, as he grabs the takeout bags with his other hand. “We got lucky. The line cook at O'Reilly’s Grill is a fan who nerded out with us for ten minutes before taking a whack at it with great enthusiasm. The whole kitchen staff hopes you feel better soon, by the way.” 

Will makes friends everywhere he goes. Of course he does, with that seamless blend of no-nonsense and amiability that makes people open up to him. It’s the same quality that makes him so good at his job—patients tend to be more forthcoming if they feel taken care of by the nursing staff—and that kept him from giving up on Nico all those years ago. 

And now they’re married, and Will’s the one who encouraged him not to shy away from the feelings he still had for Percy, and by some miracle neither Will nor Jason has objected to the change, and mostly Nico’s still floored by the whole thing—

But somehow, more than anything else, it feels… right. 

“I’m going to stick these in the broiler for a minute to heat back up.” Will pauses at the doorway, tapping thoughtfully for a moment. “You two were talking about the brat and his self-flagellation, right? Nico, maybe that mood you’re in is for him. It seems like he could really use it tonight, and Jason’s obviously been benched.” 

“I’m certainly not opposed to a show, though,” Jason adds, so casually it makes Nico choke on his spit a little, but Will’s grinning and waggling his eyebrows—

“My thoughts exactly, big guy—”

—and Percy’s growling in frustration loudly enough to be heard from downstairs—

“How the _ fuck _ do you find anything up here?” 

—and so Nico gives up and slips past Will, shooting him a heated stare when a hand goes for his ass, and sticks his head over the banister.

“Closet. Top shelf. And bring the vampire gloves down with you, too.” 

There’s a moment of silence, then Percy appears at the top of the stairs, gloves and bong in hand, beaming. 

“Out of all of my housemates, you’re definitely one of my three favorites.” 

The praise still makes Nico’s inner ten year old squeal with overwhelming joy. Heart fluttering, he waits until Percy’s at the foot of the stairs and makes his move. 

“Fuck!” 

Apparently, based on the startled expletive that falls from soft lips, Percy wasn’t expecting to be slammed against the wall. Based on the way he goes loose and lets Nico take his weight, it’s not a problem. 

“Go fill the pipe and we’ll see.” 

“Fuck you,” Percy answers, breathless but still beaming. Nico steps back to let him move, the heat of Percy’s shoulders lingering against his palms. 

“Keep talking shit. Go on; I want to see how much trouble you can get yourself into.” 

Jason winks from his place on the couch, and that too sends little pleasant shudders cascading down his spine. Percy’s clattering about in the kitchen, the tap running, and the smell of chives and meat are starting to waft through the house, and when Nico returns to his spot kneeling by the coffee crate Will scoots over to lean against him, an arm over his shoulders. Warmer than Percy, even, and he smells like Jason’s favorite artisan shaving soap, and there’s a part of Nico that wants to just curl up and bask in it. 

But then Percy’s back, Mrs. O’Leary at his hip, Davy full of water in one hand and a tray of four burgers balanced in the crook of his other arm. Somehow, he manages not to drop either, a feat he seems to agree is worth noting, since he takes a bow once they’re both on the crate and Mrs. O’Leary is occupied with the bully stick he’d produced seemingly out of nowhere. Nico’s given up trying to figure out how he does it. He has too many of his own secrets to begrudge the guy a few of his own.

“So whose turn is it to pat my ass and call me a good boy?” Percy asks, smirking as he plops down on Will’s other side. Jason gives him a pointed look, then gives another, more pleading, to Nico. 

“Finish up with Davy and you’ll earn yourself a reward.” Nico reaches across Will’s lap and into Percy’s pocket, pulling out the gloves. 

Small, because Nico’s hands are. Black, because he rarely wears anything but. Leather, because Nico can afford it and it’ll last, even with heavy use. Well-loved, because nothing else makes Percy purr in quite the same way, and because of the sentimental value of the first toy they ever used together. 

Something happens then, a change in expression Nico probably wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t spent so much time analyzing and re-analyzing every microscopic twitch of muscle. Much more shy and insecure than he’d ever given it credit for in high school, a feeling Nico hadn’t realized they were both painfully used to until it slapped him in the face. 

“I’ll do my best,” Percy says, quiet, and it’s so tentative that Nico’s moving before he processes his own intent, leaning forward to kiss Percy on the cheek. The light stubble stings his raw lip a little, but when he pulls back there’s no smear of red.  _ So there.  _

“You always do.” 

Percy rolls his eyes, but he’s flushed, and can’t seem to keep from smiling. 

The burgers are incredible, even after being reheated. The change in Jason’s demeanor once the pot sets in is dramatic and a little hilarious—Percy wasn’t wrong about how much of a lightweight, ironically, he is—but it’s weak enough that all it really does to Nico is loosen his muscles and blunt the edge of his angst. 

He’s lost track of what Jason’s rambling about—something to do with the effects of NSAIDs on bone density and the draconian policies of the NFL—largely because Percy’s immensely distracting, sprawled on the floor with his shirt off and his head in Nico’s lap and a familiar, pleased, very nearly blissful sighing spilling from his mouth every time the sharp points drag over his back. 

Not hard enough to break skin, not tonight when they’re all this frazzled and none of them is exactly sober, but enough to settle Percy down. Ground him with a familiar pain, and at the same time keep him close by, reassuring. 

It’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s worth it for that rush of power when green or blue eyes are staring up at him in surrender, when blue-black or honey-blond hair is in his fist—Jason’s right, it’s an excellent handhold and show of dominance and the excitement it engenders is hard to quantify. 

(It’s worth it, too, to lose sometimes, to let Will take the reins, to sit down with Percy instead of over him, but that one is a lot harder to examine very closely.) 

“You really are a painslut, aren’t you?” he murmurs. Percy lights up, nuzzling at Nico’s belly through his hoodie. 

“Hugely.” 

“Better?” Nico rewards that brilliant smile with a little more pressure, just enough to leave a few raised red lines. 

“Leagues.”

At that, Jason pauses in his rant and looks over at them. His eyes are hazy and unfocused—he’s too stoned to hold back his inner sap. 

“Nico, remind me to thank you when I’m sober for being absolutely excellent with my most prized possession.” 

Percy squirms at that last proclamation, his ears going scarlet. Will, for his part, looks just as happy and mushy as Jason. “They’re adorable, aren’t they? He looks like a ragdoll cat, lying there in a puddle like that.” 

It’s apparently the funniest thing anyone has ever said, at least by the helpless laughter Jason dissolves into, which gets Percy started, and before long they’re all losing their shit. 

If you’d told Nico a decade ago that he’d be here today, Percy cackling in his lap while Will pounds on Jason’s back to get him to breathe, he’d have throttled you in a heartbeat. But here they are, living the reality that had so defied expectations. Here Percy is, the real Percy, not the idealized version Nico had made up in his head. With Nico, holding onto Nico, arching his back into Nico’s touch like the cat Will proclaimed him to be, demanding attention.

It’s nothing like he ever imagined, but now he can’t imagine anything else, and maybe that’s for the better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m figuring Will grew up in a polyamorous household, so it wasn’t really a big deal to him. Nico probably freaked out when he broached the subject, but eventually came around with a lot of reassurance and affection and support. Because communication is good. :3 
> 
> Next up: boot worship, and back to your regularly-scheduled Jercy.


	4. Boot Worship - part one (nonsmut)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If you say you’re fine _one more time,_ so help me, Grace, I _will_ shove a ball gag in your mouth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **ETA January 2, 2020:** Now with beautiful illustration of Will going clothes-mining by the wonderful demipunk. [Please go check it out](https://demipunk.tumblr.com/post/190005403194) and send your love!!
> 
> — 
> 
> Bear with me on this. >_> 
> 
> I have no idea how it got this long, but it was starting to give me a headache and I want to try to keep to a roughly monthly schedule on this, so I’m breaking it up into two parts: this one, the exposition/plot/set-up dump, and the next one, which will be the actual kinky stuff. 
> 
> I also have no idea when this thing went from “rough ficlet collection” to “hey remember that multichapter you wanted to write isn’t this so much easier with a vague structure” so, uh, yeah, it has a plot now too. 
> 
> **content warning** for discussions of weight and pregnancy, and brief discussion of a past gory demise. (Heads up, since Nico is Nico, death talk will likely continue to come up.) There is also the first allusion to a potential future sugar daddy kink, not to be confused with Percy calling himself a pet parent.

“_ I GOT THE EYE OF THE TIGER, A FIGHTER, DANCING THROUGH THE FIRE—” _

“Someone turn that goddamn thing _ off.” _

Nico grumbles, partly muffled by the pillow, and reaches over Will’s chest to grab his phone from the nightstand and silence the alarm. 

“Six-fifteen in the morning is _ way _ too early for Katy Perry, Solace.” 

“Sorry, I forgot to cancel it before we passed out.” Will sits up, blinking slowly as though shaking off the tendrils of sleep. He’s probably still feeling the indica from last night, and Jason _ definitely _is, considering he’s still out like a log and hasn’t even twitched. If not for the even rise and fall of his bare chest, Percy might have worried he’d kicked the bucket in the middle of the night. 

Overcome with affection, he leans over and noses Jason’s cheek. The early-morning scruff is a little like sandpaper and dark like the hair everywhere but his head, and most importantly, wonderfully familiar. 

Which must apply both ways, since Jason’s next inhale is much deeper and he holds it before letting it out in a sigh. He smiles, then lazily opens his eyes—yep, a little red and unfocused; still stoned. 

“G’morning, handsome.”

“Good morning, beautiful.” 

Over on Percy’s other side, Nico mimes gagging. Will snickers, rolling out of bed to dig through the clothes nobody bothered to pick up from the floor last night en route to Jason and Percy’s california king. 

(Not that Percy had much of a choice, since Nico had thrown him over his shoulder in the living room and only put him down once they actually got to the bed and everyone else had already stripped. Someone must have gotten his clothes off, too, since he’s just as naked as the rest of them and Will’s yanking on the jeans he’d been wearing, but he doesn’t remember who or how. Or much of anything, really; he’d been kind of busy with a different cock in his mouth and ass and hand, all at once.) 

“Let’s be fair, my love; we’re almost as gross_ .” _After Percy’s jeans is one of Nico’s t-shirts, which tousles his bed-head even more, making him look a little like a blond porcupine. “Everything’s a good look on you, but hypocrisy is still hypocrisy.”

“Taurus is ruled by Venus; Nico gets a pass to be as gross as he wants.” And, fine, maybe Percy’s still feeling it too, in the looseness of his shoulders and desire to start giggling. He’s half out of it, but he’s also in the kind of fantastic mood that only follows a fantastic lay, and he’s still feeling servicey. He might as well use the impulse to say thanks. “Anyway, since we’re all up now, who wants a cappuccino?” 

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Nico growls, rolling over to pin Percy to the mattress. “You’re staying right where you are if I have to _ make you _.” 

Suddenly, Percy is very aware of his morning wood, and the proximity of it to Nico’s. Fuck. 

“What are you gonna do, tie me up?”

“Be careful what you wish for.” Nico’s voice, still rough, has gone lower and darker, and Jason’s hand snakes behind him to cup Percy’s dick. He’s officially at full mast, feeling the flush spread down his neck and chest, and can’t help rocking against the pressure. 

“I hate both of you with a fiery, burning passion.” 

“Liar.” Jason stops what he’s doing to reach up and tug on Percy’s hair, hard, his own reaction obvious against Percy’s hip. 

“Brat,” Will adds from across the room, where he’s rummaging for something that seems to have gone missing under a dresser. “You know you’re not allowed anywhere near the milk steamer until at least nine-thirty, preferably ten. Someone should spank you for your impertinence.”

Nico’s knee is digging into Percy’s rib, and Jason is like a personal furnace next to him, and Will knows _ exactly _how they both get regarding impact scenes, and they’re all playing him like a fiddle, and he can’t even be pissed about it when his throat and ass are deliciously sore and his back is covered in scratches he can still feel, stinging slightly at the pressure of his body weight against the bed. 

The jerks. 

“Someone _ should _spank me for my impertinence, and if one of you doesn’t follow through I’ll be very put out.” 

The three of them exchange looks over his head. The conspiratorial smirks signal a danger that makes him shiver.

“Tell you what,” Jason says, letting go of Percy’s hair to rest a hand on his shoulder. “You go back to sleep, and Nico and I will brainstorm something really good to tag-team you with later.” 

“Fine by me. I could use an outlet for my Machiavellian impulses.” Nico sits up, but he shoots a sly look Percy’s way before rolling off. “And just so you know, you’re cute when you’re put out, so that’s a terrible disincentive.” 

“Am I going to be relegated to the peanut gallery, or do I get a say in planning this gangbang?” The tone with which Will says it—followed by the triumphant _ aha _ with which he stands back up, Jason’s Columbia sweatshirt in his hands—says he isn’t bothered either way. 

(Jason’s always been into watching, but it wasn’t until Will was there too that Percy realized the thrill increased exponentially with additional participants. According to Nico, Will’s just as much of a voyeur as Jason, it’s just that he verbalizes his opinions on the proceedings—and often has brilliant ideas.) 

“You have a gift for creative sadism. Of course you get a say,” Percy mutters. It’s not even sarcastic. Will’s the one who alerted Nico to the existence of the vampire gloves, and having as much experience as he does with human biology and first aid gives him an edge that’s only rivaled by Nico’s encyclopedic knowledge of anatomy. “But I take it I _ don’t _.” 

“You don’t _ want _ a say.” Nico grins, that look that reads as sinister unless you know him well enough to recognize the playful affection underneath it, and that Percy hadn’t gotten to see in full force until recently. “Don’t pretend you do.” 

“Fuck you. Yes, I know, you’re a top, ha ha.” Defeated and turned on, Percy yanks the covers back over his shoulder and flops onto his side. “You’re not wrong, but I don’t have to like it.”

The mattress next to him dips and cold, slim fingers run over the back of his neck. On principle, Percy hides his smile in the pillow.

“I hate mornings as much as you do, Grumpy Gills. I’ll come back to bed once the larks are settled with breakfast.” 

“You better. It’d be a shame if you didn’t get to bask in my put-outness, since you think it’s so cute for whatever reason.” 

“Oh, please. Having a crush on Percy Jackson was a rite of passage for everyone in our graduating class who liked boys, and a few people who didn’t, but made an exception for you.” Will rolls his eyes and makes his way to Jason’s side of the bed, holding out his hands palm-up. “Alright, Supes, on three—and keep your damn weight off that leg and let me help you balance this time, please.” 

“I’m f—”

“If you say you’re fine _ one more time _ , so help me, Grace, I _ will _shove a ball gag in your mouth. You don’t scare me.”

Jason is a terrible patient, but Will has a knack for dealing with terrible patients, so Percy can let the comment about his own cuteness—there’s no possible way it’s true; he _ has _to be projecting—slide without argument and focus on enjoying the exchange. It really is way too early for all of this, and Will’s not the type to give in to an attempt at stoicism, so Percy can accept the loss and shut his eyes with the knowledge that there’s a registered nurse nearby, just in case. 

“Too sleepy to fight you, but this conversation isn’t over.” Someone reaches over to start stroking his scalp, and as though on cue Percy can feel a heavy buzzing set into his limbs and cottony exhaustion tugging at the edges of his awareness. “Magic hair thing is _ cheating, _ by the way. _ ” _

“I’ll poll facebook and prove it to you. If it’s less than six people, I’ll do all of your laundry for a week. And it’s not cheating, it’s using your ASMR as a legally-obtained powerup.” 

“What do I have to do for a week if I lose?” 

Percy feels himself starting to slip into unawareness. It must be Nico doing the petting, since Jason’s got an arm around Will’s shoulder and the other hand bracing himself on the bedside table while he turns to shoot a smirk somewhere above Percy’s head.

“Give yourself over to Nico’s Machiavellian impulses, maybe.” His deep voice is casual, but his eyes spark with amusement. “Last I checked with you, when he gets going, he’s worse than Evil Jason. Seems like an adequate penalty to me.”

Percy’s pretty sure he says something about rocks and hard places and making him hope he doesn’t win, and he thinks he hears Nico huff with quiet laughter, but then the ridiculously early hour and the sure, soothing caresses catch up with him, and he doesn’t hear or think or say anything at all. 

Later, his consciousness surfaces when an arm slides around his waist, slender but secure. 

“Yeesh. Your nose is colder than Mrs. O’Leary’s.” 

“Why do you think I’m doing it? Your neck’s warm and I have shitty circulation.” 

“You’re lucky I have an ice-play kink.” 

“_ You’re _lucky I’m too nocturnal to drag you over my knee at seven-thirty.”

“Empty promises.” 

Nico tightens his hold around Percy and bites his shoulder, hard enough to sting. 

“Go back to sleep,” he grumbles against the new mark on Percy’s skin. “I’m tired, you’re tired, and we have to take a hyperactive mastiff to the vet soon. Will made sure to wear her out before he and Jason left, so she’s having a post-fetch nap, but that’s not going to last and I want us both at least semi-rested. We can’t afford any more dog-related injuries.”

Percy wants to put up a fight, but Nico’s right. Unconsciousness is starting to tug at him again, drowning out his arousal, and Nico is close and quickly warming up from the duvet and shared body heat, and it’s too cozy to resist falling back under. 

It’s possible Nico kisses his shoulder and whispers something into his skin right as he goes out, but there’s an even chance he’s dreaming. 

—

The routine started within a week of the first time Nico and Percy slept together, almost a year ago now, and up until recently has been going strong. 

Will’s alarm goes off and blares some pop-rock hit or another at ass-fifteen in the morning, which wakes Nico out of a dead sleep and jolts him with enough grouchiness to propel himself through firing up the espresso machine while Will jumps in the shower. Then Jason’s alarm goes off with some much more sensible church bells and he joins Nico in the kitchen, and the two of them chat while they go through the duet of making breakfast and coffee. Sometimes, at some point, Percy wanders in with bleary eyes and a tenuous grip on consciousness and tries to help, and one of them has to march him back to bed while the other takes on milk-frothing or bacon-flipping duty. 

Will makes his way out of the shower and sets the dishes to soak while he and Jason eat, and Nico gives Will a kiss and trudges back to Percy and Jason’s room, where he big-spoons Percy—always out like a log and snoring into the pillow—and settles in for another hour or two of sleep. Then the two of them laze for a while, until eventually Percy’s head starts hurting from lack of caffeine and he drags himself into the kitchen for one of his ridiculously complex and sugary latte creations, and Nico resigns himself to the waking world and gets on reheating the food Jason cooked earlier and pretending not to like the orange-berry-mocha-whatever when Percy whips up a serving for him, too.

The only variation is nights like yesterday, when Jason wants to watch and Will wants to provide commentary, and they end up all camping out in the same room because everyone is too worn out and satisfied to bother moving. Even then, the difference is limited to Will turning off his alarm, a few mumbled comments from a mostly-asleep Percy, and the sheets smelling like himself when he slides back under them.

Then they got a dog, and mostly it’s still the same, but now he’s lucky to get an extra fifteen minutes of snoozing. If Percy weren’t so goddamn cute when she startles him awake, all bedheady and discombobulated, it’d be turning into a serious problem. 

“Off,” Percy wheezes, shoving uselessly at the hulking mass of fur that’s just come crashing down across their midriffs. “Missy, I adore you, but you’re _ too big to jump on Daddy’s abdomen _. We’ve been over this. Repeatedly.”

Nico’s not breathing too well either, and he’d really like to go back to sleep for a while, but he knows that once Mrs. O’Leary has decided it’s time for them to get up, she cannot be swayed, and her nose really is quite cold. Whoops. Maybe he should have felt a little worse about doing it to Percy—

_ —“hah, again, there—” _

_ — _but on second thought, he’s a big boy who can handle a little chill. Nico buries his face in the warm hollow between Percy’s neck and his shoulder with a groan, but a bit of a smirk, too, at the soft and not-quite-unhappy hiss. 

“I’m asking my mom to knit you one of those nose-warmer thingies. Tassel and everything,” Percy grumbles, but tellingly, he doesn’t squirm away when Nico presses closer. “You’d match my sister. She’d love that.” 

“Now _ that’s _cheating.” 

Little sister figures have always been his weak spot, but most people who meet her can agree that there’s something about Estelle that makes it all but impossible to deny her anything. And Percy knows it—he’s even weaker to her puppy eyes than Nico is—but that just makes it more effective. 

“No, it’s not, it’s using your secret squishy heart as a legally-obtained powerup.”

Nico tries to work up a scowl, but any real crankiness remains out of reach. Instead, he ignores Percy settling back against the pillow and looking entirely too pleased with himself, and turns his attention back to the small bear splayed across his stomach. 

“I swear she’s heavier than Jason. Is that even possible?”

“She is. She’s taller, too, if she’s up on her hind legs.” 

“Jason is _two meters tall_. Are we sure she doesn’t have some form of gigantism?” 

Percy snorts. “Three and a half centimeters too short, but close enough. Guess we’ll find out soon if there’s a reason for the huge-ganticness or if she’s just normal, everyday huge like him.” 

Ugh. The vet. They have to be focused and social in—he glances at Percy’s phone—an hour and thirteen minutes, which is longer than she’s ever let them sleep in, but the tradeoff is that there’s not enough time to keep putting off wakefulness. Reluctantly, Nico throws in his weight and heaves until they manage to shove Mrs. O’Leary into the spot where Jason usually sleeps, sucking in a lungful of air once he can expand his ribcage again.

“This is ridiculous. We need to put a guard rail around the bed she can’t jump over, or one day she’ll suffocate us in our sleep.” 

“Wouldn’t do any good. She’d just ram into it and knock it down.” 

“I guess a baby gate is out for the same reason.”

“We’re just going to have to accept it,” Percy agrees, stretching his arms above his head with a grimace. “This is how we’ll die. Crushed in our own bed by an elephant who thinks she’s a chihuahua. Peine forte et doggy.” 

“Never let Jason hear you butcher a romance language that way.” Nico pauses, trying not to think too hard about the usage of the word _ our _. “On second thought, do. You’d probably like his reaction.” 

It makes Percy grin, and Nico feels the expression in his solar plexus. 

“You’ll just have to report back on my cheek when you two make your evil plans.” 

If Nico pauses on the way to the bathroom and reaches over to smack Percy’s ass, hard, well, he has justification— the delighted yelp he gets in response is better than caffeine at getting him energized, and Percy likes it hard anyway. 

“Just you wait,” Nico snarls, and feels Percy’s answering grin in the pit of his stomach. “I’m putting you through hell at the earliest convenience.”

“Don’t keep me waiting _ too _long.” 

Percy, in typical fashion, escalates the situation by going for Nico’s crotch. 

_ We can get breakfast and coffee on the way, _he decides, and throws Percy over his shoulder for the second time in twelve hours before continuing his route to the shower. If Percy has any complaints, he’s too busy laughing to voice them. 

—

“Are you sure you’re good?” 

“Why don’t we put a temporary moratorium on asking each other that question?” 

“Absolutely not,” Percy says cheerfully, looking far too pleased as he holds the door to the grill open for Jason to limp through. “You get to do it to me in bed, so I get to do it to you everywhere else. Winter turns to spring, the worrywart becomes the subject of worry, and there’s nothing his gorgeous, worrywart ass can do about it. Especially when I have medical justification to be concerned, mister catastrophic knee injury two, electric boogaloo.” 

“I’m _fine. _It’s not even a full tear this time—hardly as catastrophic as an unhappy triad.” Not that Percy will suddenly listen the five thousandth time he says it, but Jason’s committed. “Astonishingly fine, according to Clarisse.” 

“And a big part of that is your housemates forcing you not to overdo it, so you’re welcome.” 

Percy’s still pulling at the frayed hem of his sweatshirt sleeve, though, and he still hasn’t elaborated on the big news he’d texted about after Mrs. O’Leary’s appointment, or why Will was treating her so gingerly when they got back. 

Something’s eating at him—he’s too stressed for it to go well if Jason pushes the matter, so instead he slips his free hand through Percy’s elbow as they move to an empty table. It nets him an arched eyebrow, which he answers with a smile.

“You made a good point right as I started twinging.” 

“Bullshit, you’re just humoring me.” 

“A little, but it really does hurt.”

It’s not awful, thanks largely in part to the CBD-infused honey Grover sent along with the last supply, but it’s not pleasant, and calls back too many bad memories of being couchridden for weeks and hobbling around on crutches for months after and every so often, even up until this most recent reinjury, staring at the ceiling all night, various medications taking the edge off but not enough to let him sleep. The mid-afternoon lunch date is a welcome breather, and one they haven’t had in way, way too long. 

“If you didn’t want to sit and wait while I put in the orders, you wouldn’t have told me it’s bothering you.” 

It’s not a question, so Jason doesn’t answer. He just rests his cane on the back of the chair Percy pulls out for him and takes the seat, stretching his leg underneath the table to the booth side. He hadn’t actually thought of it that way, but as soon as it’s presented as an option, all he wants to do is rest.

“That bad, huh?” 

“Sorry, was I wincing?” 

Percy gives him a lopsided smile. “You can’t lie to me any more than I can lie to you. We can get these to go, if you want.” 

“Honestly, now that I’m down, I’d rather not get back up for a while.”

Percy softens, but not in a good way; his eyebrows draw close and the smirk shifts into a frown for a second, but Jason reaches over and circles his fingers around Percy’s wrist, and that seems to help, if the small smile that takes its place is any indication.

“And I’ve missed having lunch with you on a regular basis,” he adds, and that makes Percy blush, which is worth all of the effort a hundred times over. 

“I’d say we should try scheduling them in again if we weren’t both terrible at scheduling.” 

Hearing it makes Jason’s heart flutter, twice as hard when he looks up into bright green eyes and finds only affection looking back at him. 

“You’ll never be as bad as I am, if that’s any consolation.” 

“Not much, no.” But Percy’s grinning, and he doesn’t even fight when Jason lets go and hands over his wallet. Another win. He’s on a roll today. 

“Order for me. I trust you,” he chances, and Percy proves his hypothesis by leaning down and kissing him. Hard.

“Yes, Sir,” he whispers against Jason’s mouth. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing, too—if Jason weren’t aching so badly from the goddamn rain, he’d be publicly indecent from the way the sound rolls down his spine. 

“Smartass,” he whispers back, and feels Percy’s smile widen before he pulls away. 

“You like it,” Percy says at full volume, and strides over to the counter before Jason can respond. 

He can hear laughter and amicable conversation. Of course he can—Percy’s a lot like Will in his ability to charm just about everyone he meets. Jason can’t actually make out the conversation, but it’s wonderful to hear that sweet, melodic voice free from tension for the first time in days. By the time Percy comes back to the table, plastic number card in hand, he looks a lot more alive, and Jason feels muscles release he hadn’t realized he was clenching. 

“Check it out. We’re table twelve.” 

It was Jason’s jersey number in high school. It’s certainly chance (no matter how many times Percy insists his star chart explains his entire personality, he refuses to take stock in what’s essentially pattern-matching and confirmation bias), but the coincidences make Percy happy, and that’s enough for Jason.

“Of course, it’s probably meaningless happenstance,” Percy concedes, giving Jason a pointed smirk. But Jason’s feeling permissive today, mostly because that’s all he can trust himself with in his current state of mental fog, so he meets Percy in the middle. 

“But it _ could _be destiny.” 

Percy lights up like a candle. Moments like this are the reason that, no matter how much his rational brain needles at him for it, Jason can’t completely discount the possibility that there‘s something to it. 

“You’re the only person I know who can pull off being a hopeless romantic and a stick in the mud at the same time.”

“Should I take that as a compliment or an insult?”

“Neither. It’s a statement of fact.” Percy grins, though, sliding into the booth on the other side of the table. “I _ do, _however, think it’s hot. God knows why, but I do.”

“And I’m lucky for it, since it means I get to keep you without worrying too much about driving you up the wall.” 

Percy flushes all the way down to the collar of his shirt, and from experience Jason knows it’s spread over his chest too. When he looks up, his eyes are bright, and he reaches up to take hold of the pendant around his neck. 

“You’d get to keep me anyway,” he says, softly. “The only reason we aren’t engaged yet is because _someone _likes to plan things way in advance and test the limits of my patience. Which you keep telling me are all but nonexistent, so you might as well stop trying. I’m in this for the long haul. You can’t get rid of me.”

_ Mine, _ agrees Jason’s lizard brain, _ all mine, even when I’m sharing, _and he lets it surface in his smile. Percy seems to see it, his own smirk widening.

“I guess I’m lucky you wanted a kept boy in the first place, too.” 

“I couldn’t have asked for a better one.” 

Percy responds with a look of wonderment as though he hadn’t been expecting it, the words he struggles to say aloud written plainly on his face. 

“I know,” Jason murmurs. “I love you too.” 

“I’m tabling the sap for now,” Percy returns, shifting in his seat. “You keep going and I’m gonna cry, which I’d rather avoid doing in public.” 

“Fair enough. I’ll save the sweet-talking for the bedroom.” 

All at once, the setting comes back to him. Percy, observant little shit that he is, makes an attempt to hold back his snickering, although he’s less than successful. 

“You will not. You’re incapable of it. I appreciate the effort, though, and you’re pretty when you blush like a virgin.” 

“So,” Jason prompts, deliberately ignoring that last comment and the heat still on his face, once he’s given Percy a chance to reorient himself and get settled. 

Okay, ‘settled’ is the wrong word; he’s twitchy and nervous and looking down at his phone every few seconds, and once called on it he seems to give up trying to suppress it and slumps over the table.

“So. Mrs. O’Leary had her first appointment with our new vet while you were having your PT intake.”

“Did they find something wrong?” 

“Not _ wrong, _just really, really unexpected.” Percy lifts his head and shoots Jason a weak smile. “We’re going to have puppies in a few weeks. Seven of them, according to the ultrasound. Surprise.” 

Jason waits for the laughter, the _ sike; I had you going there _. It doesn’t come. 

“She wasn’t spayed?” he says eventually, voice sounding slightly strangled. Percy barks out equally choked laughter. 

“Apparently not.” 

“When did she even have the _ opportunity_?” 

“Nico thinks it was his dad’s dog, and I can’t think of any other time she was around an unfixed male.”

Spot, a large, energetic rottweiler who still brings Nico tennis balls and sticks to toss when they visit, is also a breeding stud, and it throws their interactions—specifically the butt-sniffing and what they’d apparently incorrectly assumed to be dry-humping—into a completely different light. Damn. 

“That would explain why you had so much trouble keeping them away from each other.” 

“At the housewarming party about a month and a half ago, lining up perfectly with the vet’s estimation of her due date.” 

“And now you’re kicking yourself for leaving them alone outside and not figuring it out sooner.” 

“She’s just so _big,” _Percy whines, burying his face in his arms again. “I assumed she’d been fixed, so I didn’t think to ask Quintus if she was, and I thought it was normal for her to be on the heavy side since she’s taller than a lot of dude mastiffs, but it turns out she’s carrying around _seven infants’ worth _of extra weight and I _didn’t notice_. It’s a miracle everyone’s still healthy. She’s probably going to need a C-section because she’s so huge, and what if she’d gone into early labor when we were asleep? Her puppies could have died! _She_ could have died!” 

And thusly, through the increasingly anxious rambling, the problem reveals itself. Jason cuts him off by brushing a strand of dark hair behind his ear.

“You have good instincts, especially for your pack, and you’re just as loyal to her as she is to you. She knows she can trust you to take care of her—she’d have woken you up if something went wrong, and you’d have realized it was serious and taken her in right away.”

Percy reaches up and takes hold of Jason’s wrist, and when he lifts his head, he’s not making that awful, guilt-ridden face anymore. The winning streak continues. 

“That’s one advantage to my neuroticism. Sometimes the worst actually does happen, and my contingency plans pay off.” 

“I would hardly call a surprise pregnancy ‘the worst’. Especially if they’re all still healthy.”

“Yeah, because I happened to make a rookie mistake by what would have been overfeeding her if she weren’t eating for eight.”

“See my point about your instincts. You know she's motivated by play more than food, which meant the sudden increase in appetite was unusual, and there was probably a reason.”

“She begged occasionally, but I guess you’re right. She’s been getting tired more easily, too. For a while, especially at the beginning when her stomach was bothering her and she actually _ lost _ some weight, I thought she’d picked up a stubborn bug, and I figured she was eating more now to recover.” Percy frowns. “God, it’s so obvious in retrospect. My mom lost weight from morning sickness, too.”

“Babe, everything is obvious in retrospect. What matters is that you love her and you’re there for her when she needs you.” Carefully, Jason turns his hand to lace his fingers through Percy’s and squeeze lightly. “You’ll probably sit with her for the whole birthing process if they’ll let you, and fight them on it if they don’t. I wouldn’t envy them. Better people have tried and failed to keep you out of delivery rooms.” 

That gets a huff of laughter, finally_ , _ and Percy sits all the way up, but he keeps his hand closed around Jason’s. 

“You would not _ believe _how pushy those doctors got. It was like they’d never seen a seventeen year old boy interact with a baby before, and they thought if they let me in, I’d try to take out my competition or something.”

“Naturally. We do live in ancient Greece, after all, where resources are scarce and women and girls are property at best, so why _ wouldn’t _ you try to throw your newborn sister to the wolves if given the opportunity?” 

Percy rolls his eyes. “That one lady even accused me of lying about having gone to birthing classes with my parents. She couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that I didn’t run screaming at the very mention of a uterus. I mean—” He makes a face, something akin to the one a kid would make when presented with steamed kale. “It wasn’t exactly _ fun _ to learn in excruciating detail about everything that was happening to my mother’s reproductive organs, but I figured the awkwardness was a small price to pay to be prepared in case we got stuck on a broken-down train or something and I had to deliver the baby.” 

“And then you changed Estelle’s diaper without instruction, and the hospital staff all did a one-eighty and started treating you like the second coming of Jesus.” 

“It’s not even that hard.” Percy’s grimace shifts into a scowl. “And it takes ten minutes, tops, unless you make a whole big thing out of it.”

“You see? You’re already old hat at newborns.” 

“_ Human _newborns. Puppies don’t wear diapers. You have to make them go by rubbing their butts until they do.” 

“But the instinct is there. The fact that you know that just proves my point—you bothered to check in the first place. Admit it. You’re a nurturer.” 

“You first. You’re the most mom-friend person I know. Except for my actual mom.” 

“I’m deeply flattered by the comparison.” 

The arrival of their food cuts off the conversation. Percy opted for family-style with an oversized platter of chicken tenders, a large Greek salad and a plate of cheese-and-bacon-smothered fries. Lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and greens. The chocolate frappe—malted— is a sweet, thoughtful touch. 

“Your turn.” Percy arches an eyebrow and takes a sip of his own drink, what’s most likely cherry coke. Good—the caffeine seems to be mellowing him out a little. “Did Clarisse say anything else? What do I need to get on your ass about?” 

“‘If you don’t stop wearing stupid shoes and doing stupid exercise routines, you’re going to end up with arthritis by the time you’re thirty’,” Jason recites. He can still hear her in his head, groaning exaggeratedly when he told her he was in business casual eight hours a day, five days a week. “‘Sooner or later, your luck is going to run out. Quit doing half marathons and living in oxfords, or I’ll break your other leg so you have no choice.’”

“That’s Clarisse, alright. Wearing her bouncer hat at all times, even when she’s in physical therapist mode.” Percy snorts. “For once, I agree with her. You always hurt three times as much after your office parties and five times as much after your races, and you don’t recover from either until you spend a good chunk of time lazing around in sneakers.” 

“The problem is that I can’t wear sneakers to work, either. It isn’t just the office parties, it’s the entire office dress code. The running I’ll admit was my own fault for not thinking through.” 

“Then maybe you should take Nico up on his original plan.” 

The reminder stops Jason in his tracks. When they first started house-hunting, Nico had brought him out for ice cream and a walk on the beach, and once they were alone he’d made the heartbreakingly generous offer to take care of the house payment entirely. His father is apparently an expert in the realm of currency, and through a combination of a robust investment portfolio and a sizable inheritance, he had ensured Nico’s financial security for life and then some before he was he even born, and none of them had to work at all if they didn’t want to. 

_ You might not be my fiance, but you’re still my family, and it’s still my happy imperative to support you however I can, _he’d said simply. He had gracefully pretended not to notice when Jason had to take a second for the tightness in his throat to dissipate, but requested with a wry smile that how he got his money be kept private, with the excuse that it would ruin his mystique.

(He knows, of course, that Jason’s aware of the real reason—they both know that feeling of born-wealthy guilt, though Jason had since been cut off and forced to blow through his savings on medical bills and student loans. That it’s just difficult, sometimes, to think about the disparities in upbringing without being wracked with shame at every mention of a partner’s early-life struggle; that the intense need to allay that insecurity and provide for one’s own is all but impossible to ignore.) 

At the time, his pride and sense of duty had stopped him, but he’d also had full range of motion in his leg barring the occasional rainstorm or sudden shift in temperature. As though reading his mind, Percy reaches over and gently shoves at Jason’s shoulder. 

“It doesn’t have to be forever. A few months of medical leave really isn’t that big a deal, and you know it’d make him happy. It’s not like the mortgage is exorbitantly expensive anyway.”

Which is also true, so Jason really has no room to argue. There’s a local legend floating around that the place is haunted, fueled by its repeated appearance on the market—since the gruesome death of an owner on the property, nobody’s been able to stomach living there for longer than a year. That doesn’t mean he buys the stories, or that the whole thing hasn’t been way overblown, but they still get the occasional awe-struck look from someone at the grocery store when they mention living in the old gray colonial by the rocky, wooded stretch of coast. 

“I still think it’s the audio frequency of the ocean. Our pipes are also older than all of us combined.” 

“I’m aware. Occam’s razor.” Percy’s somewhere between them—not quite buying into Nico’s habit of talking to the late former owner like a fourth housemate, but not quite willing to write it off with a scientific explanation, either. “But none of our neighbors have this problem, and we got the place for under two hundred k when the median going price for a four-bedroom in our area is closer to half a million.” 

”None of our neighbors have gotten caught up in the rumor mill, though. Never underestimate the power of suggestion and vividly horrific imagery.” 

“That one I’ll give you.” Percy concedes his defeat by saluting with a chicken tender. It’s ridiculous, but it’s also adorable, and Jason can’t help but grin. “Poor guy. I mean, by all accounts I’ve heard, he was a crusty, cantankerous jerk, but dismemberment by ropes is a hell of a way to go.”

“Which is why you never try to move an adjustable bed up a flight of stairs by yourself with a pulley system and no spotter.” 

Percy moves to put the chicken tender in his mouth, but he stops halfway with a grimace. 

“Truly A-plus meal conversation we’re having here. Now all I can picture is our front hall looking like a murder scene.” 

“So change the subject.” Jason forks an olive and offers it, and Percy relaxes, huffing with amusement. 

“You’re such a nerd.” He takes the olive, though, and seems to slip into thought as he chews it. He swallows, nods to himself and makes eye contact. “Mm. I think you should go boot-shopping with me and Nico.” 

It’s certainly a subject change, ostensibly an innocent one, but last night after the gloves were put away, the doc martens had come out, and Jason’s head fills immediately with vivid memories of Nico sitting on the end of their bed and Percy knelt at his feet, tonguing the leather over his ankle. 

“You’re incredibly lucky I’m in too much pain to make you pay for that mental image.” 

“What, the image of you getting back some of your comfort and mobility with the advice of an experienced consumer?” The carefully-angelic look on Percy’s face says he knows what he’s doing, and the way he leans in and drops his voice proves it. “You promised me _ months _ago, dude. When are you going to follow through if not when you actually need a new pair?” 

“I’d need two, since I’m operating by Nico’s rules and no shoes I wear outside are ever going anywhere near your mouth, for hygienic reasons. This is non-negotiable. It’s just taking me a while to save up.” 

“You know—” Percy drops his voice even further, and this time the smile is positively conspiratorial. “I’m pretty sure Nico has a little bit of a sugar daddy kink. He always gets all growly when I let him drag me to Trash and Vaudeville; it’d probably make him happy if you let him buy you some high-end footwear, too.” 

“Lovely weather we’re having,” Jason says, pointedly. “Really fantastic, don’t you think? I just love cold, drizzling rain.”

“Should I tell him you’re into it—ow, hey, watch where you jab with that thing; that was my shin!” 

“Then stop making me picture Nico checking out your ass in tripp pants.” 

“Last time, it was just new vans since I wore a hole in my old pair, but I _ did _promise him I’d try on a harness the next excursion.” Percy’s grin widens when Jason lightly raps him again with his cane. “I’ve been thinking anyway about boots that don’t leave a trail of glitter everywhere I go. Maybe we can make a day out of it—Will has a few eight-to-sixes next week; we could all get dinner in the city after.” 

They haven’t been on a double date since before signing, either. It’s a good idea, and the steering of the conversation towards flirting is a brilliant move. Unfortunately, Percy isn’t the only one who sometimes needs plausible deniability about this sort of thing. The stabbing pain in his knee cements the deal. 

“Alright, fine. I’ll let you two take me shopping.” Percy visibly relaxes, and Jason can feel himself follow. “But I’m drawing the line at Armani. If he wants to spend a thousand bucks on a pair of shoes, he can get them for you.” 

“Some of them are as low as seven hundred,” Percy replies blithely, as though the last time Nico threatened to take him to a bespoke tailor hadn’t ended in a shouting match and a good two days of glaring at each other and refusing to talk it over. Jason’s in agreement, mostly, although that first off-the-rack morning suit really does look fantastic on Percy’s frame, and nothing brings out his eyes like the combination of bold primary colors.

At least, he’d thought he was in agreement. “Weren’t you the one who insisted he donate to charity instead every time he has the impulse to go luxury?” 

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t blow my knee in college, so I don’t actually _ need _boots that well-made.” 

“Surely there’s a middle ground here. I’d be willing to let him go up to a hundred.”

“A hundred bucks will net you mediocre construction at best. Leather isn’t something you skimp on.” 

He’s heard those exact words from Nico’s mouth numerous times. It’s why so many of the house pool of restraints and whips were so pricey, too.

“They’re really my boots anyway, right? You’re the one who’s wearing them, but I’m the one who wants you to.” 

“I don’t know how you do that.” 

“Do what?” Percy all but flutters his eyelashes, and Jason whaps his shin one more time for the road.

“Read my mind and sniff out my weak spots. I was just thinking about how I don’t care if he drops that kind of money on you.” 

“A good magician never reveals his secrets.” Percy emphasizes his point by biting into a fry, and Jason finally gives up.

“This is _ not _going to become a pattern,” he insists later on, once he and Percy are back home. Will is out walking Mrs. O’Leary, and Nico’s watching Unsolved Mysteries while he washes the dishes, and the almost-smug, definitely-excited set of his shoulders seems to support Percy’s theory about, well, everything. 

“Of course not,” he soothes, and Jason may not be able to argue, but he still notices that look. Nico is, of course, lying through his teeth, and Percy has never looked happier to be on dry-and-put-away duty. 

“Only when he actually needs ‘em, right?” 

“Don’t worry; the really good ones come with a lifetime warranty.” 

It’s not identical to Percy’s, but the slight hint of self-satisfaction on Nico’s face is pretty similar—at least, similar enough to know that this won’t be the end of the argument.

It isn’t fair that they’re ganging up on him like this, but by now, it just gets Jason going. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA lmao I don’t know how I got the idea that “peine forte et dure” was in Latin, it’s in French, as you can tell I speak neither XD; (Pls pay no attention to the edit, these are not the droids you are looking for, Jason was a linguistics minor the whole time, shhhhh) It translates to “hard and forceful punishment”, and refers to being pressed to death by stones. Look up Giles Corey from the Salem witch trials for further reading! (He’s the “more weight” guy.) 
> 
> On the subject of references I probably should’ve put in the notes to begin with: 
> 
> -6’5 3/8” is ~ 196.5 cm. Fun fact: the longest mastiff on record was a good boy named Zorba, who measured 37”/94 cm at the shoulder and a whopping 8’3” / 251 cm from tip of nose to tip of tail. Mrs. O’Leary’s unnaturally large, even for a hellhound, so I figure she’s unnaturally large for a mastiff, too—although not quite as big as Zorba. 
> 
> -An unhappy triad is a severe knee injury wherein the unfortunate person tears their ACL, MCL and meniscus in one shot. It often happens when the foot is planted on the ground (such as with cleats) and takes a direct hit to the outside of the knee, forcing it to bend inward. It’s more common in things like contact sports and skiing. 
> 
> With those out of the way: 
> 
> I remain immensely moved by your responses and I adore every single one of you. I hope everyone has an awesome new year and I’m so glad you gave your views and kudos and I’m gonna cry so I’m stopping here. 
> 
> Next up - boot worship, part 2.
> 
> (oh, and give yourself a point if you caught the Procrustes reference. :3)


	5. Boot Worship - part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Percy picks up on things Jason didn't even know about himself, and has never once fallen for any of his excuses. Ironically, Jason finds he has no choice but to submit to the tide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!ETA March 2020: 
> 
> So, the world is apparently on fire now, which is impressive because it kind of already was. I'm not going to make a habit of commenting on current events (as far as I am concerned this fic takes place in a parallel universe that's less on fire, for the sake of my own mental health), but I'm going to take a second to put on my Sally hat and remind everyone that it's okay to feel however you're feeling, you should wash your hands, and your mother loves you very much. ;_; (if she doesn't, I'm your mother now, so there.) 
> 
> I am safe and well so far, and I hope that all of you are as safe and well as you can be. Please take care of yourselves to the very best of your ability, but allow yourselves to be human too. 
> 
> Now go put on a sweater; I'm cold. 
> 
> \--
> 
> This was like pulling teeth, for some reason. Thank you all for your patience; I have learned my lesson and will no longer be holding myself to any sort of defined update schedule, as I am apparently allergic to them. 8D;
> 
> Pls pay no mind to me noticing and frantically editing thirty different nitpicky, unimportant bits of repetitive phrasing. I never seem to find them until after I post. :(

Fingers skate over laces. A low sigh, close-mouthed and quiet, filling the air with warmth and security that slips through Jason's fingers like mist. His breath comes in rapidly, too shallow to be satisfying, as deeply as he can manage. 

Percy looks and sounds as contented as Jason's ever seen him, and he can't even appreciate it adequately, too busy watching the dark head below him for any infinitesimal twitch of discomfort. What he gets instead is a glance upwards, searching and pointed.

"You're shaking." 

And he is, mostly from holding his spine so rigidly—when did he lock up like Fort Knox in the first place? It takes some concentration, but he manages to get his shoulders below his ears, and from there force the rest of his muscles to follow suit. For a minute, anyway. 

"Sorry. I'm okay." 

Percy's not having it, and huffs against the inside of Jason's ankle, intangible through the boot. (Found, miraculously in a size fourteen wide, on the shelf of a moderately priced retailer; a compromise with Nico in exchange for letting him order the everyday-use pair, hand-made, from a personal friend and artisan cobbler.) 

"This isn't fun for me unless it is for you. You're allowed to tap out too, you know." 

Damn it. Percy, as he always does, sniffs out Jason's apprehension like a hound scenting a far-off buck. It's useless to even try to argue—Percy picks up on things Jason didn't even know about himself, and has never once fallen for any of his excuses. Ironically, Jason finds he has no choice but to submit to the tide. 

"I will. You wouldn't let me get away with trying anyway. You know me too well." 

It's true, and Percy knows it too, which seems to be enough for the moment—at least, enough for him to get back to what he's doing. 

There's a part of Jason, bossy and protective and a little domineering—okay, more than a little—that Percy has deemed his Aries moon in action. Apparently, the moon rules one's inner emotions and hidden desires, which admittedly lines up with Jason's tendency to overcompensate and work even harder to shove down the instinct to take charge. 

This, right here in the warmth and seclusion of their bedroom, is the only place he doesn't have to worry about letting that part of him surface. All Percy has to do is obey and tap out when he needs to, and he's done it enough times that Jason can trust him not to try to swallow down his complaints. It hasn't always worked perfectly, but with the safety net in place, errors are a little easier to recover from. 

And Percy's under him, knelt on the floor with his eyes closed and his forehead resting against the steel toe of Jason's boot. He sighs, soft and blissful, and Jason reaches down to reward his patience and understanding by carding his fingers through thick, dark hair. 

“Just out of curiosity…” 

“Yessir.” 

Like always, the upward tilt of Percy's head goes straight to Jason’s dick. If he hadn’t already gone from zero to well past sixty the minute he walked in the bedroom to find Percy kneeling by the edge of the bed, new boots set neatly aside, plug in his ass like Jason had instructed and the heavy, studded leather collar in his mouth, that look would have done it. 

“What is it about this that draws you?” He lets go of Percy's hair to brush his cheek, inducing a sweet smile and a light nuzzle against his hand. "Not that I'm complaining. I won't insult you by telling you I'm not nervous, but I'm still into it."

“Glad we're on the same page.” Green eyes flicker open to stare up at him, focused like a laser, and Jason nods in silent permission, and has to tighten his fingers in the sheets to quell his reaction to the grin it nets him in response as Percy drops his head back down. 

“To answer your question, though–" And Jason forgot he even asked one, distracted by the shades of rose in Percy's tan brought out by the sapphire blue around his neck—"Lots of things. Service, mostly." 

The new boots will be charcoal gray, and suddenly Jason's tempted to see how they look against Percy's play collar, despite the fact that it'd mean Nico blowing another mortgage payment on a second pair. It might be worth the awkwardness, if it'll make Percy this happy. This _ reverent. _Squirming against the plug, hard as iron, leaving his cock untouched to focus entirely on Jason. 

"Of course, I also just like the taste and smell of expensive leather.” A brief glance upward, a small smile, a shudder as he leans back a little against the toy. "But mostly, it's the service. It’s the ultimate act of submission, right? Kneeling at your feet, kissing your boots. I'd do it every night when you came home, if I thought you'd let me."

Percy hates being told what to do, right up until the moment the order comes from someone he trusts. He’s been that way his whole life, and he’s been burned enough that trusting so deeply scares the shit out of him, but here he is, far enough under that he has no choice but to put his faith entirely in Jason, and he looks nothing but euphoric. 

Jason’s not exempt from burning him, either—through, shamefully, trying so hard not to that he looped back around in the other direction, backing away when he wanted to lean in closer, closing off when he should have opened up; somehow missing that it was hurting Percy a lot more to be kept at arm’s length than it would have if Jason had just manned up and told him how scared and stressed out he was in the first place. Instead, he’d decided _ for _Percy that it wasn’t worth the trouble and _certainly_ wasn't worth the risk, and at the time even talked himself into thinking he had a right to, that the intent to protect him excused the abysmal execution of shutting him out completely. 

Percy’s long since forgiven him for it. The hard part is forgiving himself, trusting himself enough to take over when Percy needs him to without slipping back into his old, destructive habit of trying to micromanage his own feelings and ending up micromanaging Percy’s instead. It’s a struggle, and it probably will be for a while, but at least these days he has some extra accountability in the form of two more people in close quarters, neither of whom is in any way afraid to call him out on his bullshit. 

“Still with me, Sir?” 

God. Jason’s not sure how long he’s been zoning out—clearly long enough that Percy noticed, the quirk of his eyebrow curious and slightly concerned. The only logical course of action is to reach over and smooth it away with his thumb. 

“Just thinking, sweet boy.” 

“You do that too much.” Before Jason has a chance to argue, Percy’s sitting up, leaning—carefully—against his good knee. “It’s not your favorite thing in the world to listen to, so I don’t get many chances to profusely thank you for everything you’ve done for me. It’s this and cocksucking.” Then his smile brightens with that familiar playful fondness. “I could do this for hours and never get bored.” 

It’s a good line. It’s _ Jason’s _line, delivered better than he ever could have and well-timed enough to shake loose some of his lingering apprehensions. Percy has always been the guy who always knows what to say and when to say it, including quoting Jason’s arguments back to him, and his instincts only seem to improve as time goes by.

“Speaking of cocksucking…” 

As predicted, Percy goes red from his hairline to his chest and his smile becomes a wide, beaming grin. Halfway to Jason’s fly, though, he stops and looks up again. 

“Can I get something first? It’ll take two seconds.” 

“Sure. Be quick.” 

Percy’s not always in the mood to go bareback—frankly, neither is Jason; some days it’s just unappealing for any variety of reasons—and he knows that no matter how deeply under he goes, he’s _ always _ entitled to get a condom if he wants to, but apparently that’s not the case tonight, since he comes back into view with Jason’s knee brace in his hand instead. A precaution Jason hadn’t even considered. 

“I’m gonna try not to jostle your leg, but just in case.” 

“My smart boy.” 

“I thought it was my turn to drown you in sap, not the other way around.” 

Percy secures the brace, gentle and deft, lip caught between his teeth as he focuses. He's still flushed, though, and there's that sweet smile again—no matter how many times he insists it doesn't bother him, Percy still has some baggage about his own smarts, and praising them is one of the easiest ways to make him flustered. Approval, reassurance, positive affirmation for something long untended to. 

He'd had it denigrated for so long by so many people that he'd internalized it and turned it into a self-deprecating joke. Well-meaning friends went along with it, thought they were laughing with him, and ground more salt into the wound in the process. 

But these days, after a great many conversations about the theory of multiple intelligences and the fact that a failure to accommodate learning disabilities said a lot more about the teacher than it did about the student, he's starting to believe it when he hears it. At least, when he hears it from Jason. 

It's enough to push past the sense that he's undeserving. Percy needs him present and engaged, and that's a million times more important than Jason's baggage. And really, it's not that hard to let himself get swept away by the hand moving up his thigh and the sudden heat of Percy's mouth. 

It's not hard either to loosen the reins a little, focus on the primal thrill of where those lips have just been. _ Mine. Beautiful, obedient, and all mine. _

Percy pulls off and drags in a harsh breath, and it's not until he looks up at Jason with eyes wide and cheeks pink he realizes he said it aloud. 

"It's true." Jason cups Percy's cheek to feel him lean against the touch, moves downward to loop his finger through the O-ring on the front of Percy's collar to see him smile. "Tell me what you are." 

"Your good little slut, Sir." 

Percy answers, grinning, without a trace of hesitation. Jason's dick jerks, hard, and he feels a growl rise in his throat as he reaches over and fists Percy's hair, pulling him back down. 

It's Percy's favorite thing to do, even more than fucking, and it shows in the expertness of his technique. Or maybe they're just used to each other now, and he's memorized all of Jason's preferences. Pressure, a swirl of tongue around the head—and Jason realizes, abruptly, Percy mostly used the same techniques on the boots. Probably on purpose, to wind Jason up and stoke the anticipation. 

The tide rises, little waves of heat at first, washing over him with every movement. The suction builds, and Percy's starting to whine but hasn't lost his rhythm at all—right up until he pulls off again, just as Jason feels himself tense and arch and then _ nothing _. 

For a second, they just look at each other. Then Jason reaches over and backhands him. 

The shiver is familiar, as is the soft smile, and the wave of relief that comes with guessing correctly. 

"You better have a damn good reason, you little tease." Jason drops his voice as low as it'll go, watching as Percy's skin erupts in gooseflesh. 

"I want you to come on my face. Please." 

Percy opens his eyes—he'd shut them against the pleasure of that sting—and Jason melts, lost in the hues and patterns of his irises, and that unquantifiable adoration. 

"How can I say no to you when you're looking at me like that?" 

He wouldn't have been able to say no anyway, but he wants to see Percy lean in close and tip his head back, cheeks pink, pliant and desperate. 

In moments like this, Jason can't deny him anything. 

He grabs Percy's hand and wraps it around his cock—Percy gets the idea and starts pumping, hand just as sure and familiar as his mouth—once, twice, and on the third pull he bites his lip and shuts his eyes in readiness, and it pulls Jason over the edge, hard. 

When he comes back to himself, he registers that the harsh cry came from him, not Percy, who's covered from his hairline to his neck. He's a mess, and he looks blissfully happy.

"Come here." It's closer to a whisper than Jason would really like, rough from overworking, but he doesn't care. He needs Percy in his arms like water in a desert. It only takes a second before he gets what he's aching for, and when he taps the inside of Percy's thigh, Percy understands the instruction without words and carefully straddles Jason's lap, trembling with what looks like the effort to keep himself up on his knees. 

He's so turned on he's starting to whimper, flushed hot and rocking his hips slightly. Jason bends his good knee up, pressing hard between Percy's thighs, right at the base of the plug he's been squirming against all night with an impressive amount of control. 

"Let it go, sweet boy," Jason whispers, sliding a hand up Percy's heaving chest, pausing to pinch a nipple just to hear that dry, hungry sob, and up over his neck to the back of his head. Percy buries his face in Jason's shoulder to muffle a wail, and a minute later he's arching and gasping and coming, and it's the most beautiful thing Jason's ever seen. 

Or, at least, it will be until tomorrow and the early-morning sun hits the curve of Percy's shoulder. 

A moment of silence, save both of them panting. Then Jason loops his arms around Percy and pulls him down onto the mattress, so that he's straddling Jason's waist and still tucked into his shoulder. Sighing, Percy puts a hand on Jason's stomach, hot through pale gray cotton.

"I made a mess of your shirt." 

"It'll wash out." 

"You should take it off." Percy lifts his head to look down at Jason, mischievousness tempered by his sleepy contentment. "I've been looking forward to the gun show all night." 

"In a minute. I just…" Jason trails off, reflexively tightening his embrace. Percy reads his mind, again, and lies back down, the cheek Jason had slapped against his heart. 

"I know. You usually drop a little after I get really into the whole veneration thing." Lightly, he kisses Jason's sternum. "I couldn't judge you for getting shaky if I wanted to." 

For a moment, Jason's tongue-tied and the room falls into silence again. Then Percy pushes himself up and kisses him again, this time on the mouth, tender and slow. 

"I'm not going anywhere, bossman," he murmurs, touching their foreheads together. Jason's eyes sting. "I'm really proud of you. I know this can be rough." 

"I don't deserve you." 

Percy lifts his head again to shoot Jason a dull glare. "Knock that shit off right the fuck now, mister. If I'm not allowed to say that, you sure as hell aren't either." 

There's no ire to it, but it lightens the mood a little, and Jason can finally call up a tentative smile in response. 

"Rephrase. I'm not sure what I did to deserve you." 

"Better. Not ideal, but better." Percy settles back down and starts running his fingertips over Jason's flank. "And yes, I know I'm being a hypocrite, but it doesn't make it any less true. You taught me that." 

"I'll work on it." Jason flattens his hand against the small of Percy's back—and realizes with a pang of guilt that he never took the plug out. Another pang hits when he does, and Percy immediately winces and squirms away from the sensation. "Sore?" 

"I've been wearing the stupid thing for three hours. Of course I'm sore. I'll live." 

Weirdly enough, it's reassuring—that it isn't something Jason did directly. It's the even, pleased tone of Percy's voice; no trace of distress, just mild discomfort, and one he's familiar with and kind of into anyway. 

Jason tilts his head up. Percy's cheek is still red—it'll probably bruise later, marking him for the next couple of weeks. The idea soothes Jason's inner possessive beast, and starts to warm his limbs. 

"Tell me if that changes." Percy nods, turning against Jason's shoulder to nuzzle gently, and Jason's heart hammers so hard it feels like it's trying to escape from his chest. 

"I know," Percy whispers, resting his hand over where he can feel the wild beating. (Of course he can. Even without the certainly-obvious sensation, he picks up on Jason's moods before Jason does. Always has.) "I love you too." 

For once, the tables turn and Jason's the one who's rendered speechless by the proclamation, who doesn't realize he's tearing up until Percy brushes a thumb across his cheek.

"Cry if you have to, dude. I'm the last person on the planet to judge you for that, either." 

"It's something I'm still unpacking."

It's easier for Percy than it is for Jason, although that hardly means it's objectively easy. He doesn't have his parents' voices constantly in the back of his head demanding he keep a stiff upper lip; Sally would never even dream of telling him not to cry, though the cultural programming had still gotten to him a little—

"Hey." Percy curves his hand over Jason's cheek, still stroking the bone gently. "You're thinking too much again. Try to relax, okay? It's alright. I'm not going anywhere." 

That does it. Jason shuts his eyes, feeling a hot tear run into his hair. 

Percy wipes it away, sits back up and slowly, gingerly climbs off of Jason's lap. He doesn't go far, just enough to pull Jason up too and get his shirt off, and smirk at the way the suddenly-cold air makes him shiver. 

"I should probably scold you for just throwing that on the floor." His own voice always sounds weird like this, thick with emotion and a different sort of roughness, but Percy isn't fazed. Is just looking down at him, adoring. 

"I'll take care of it when I'm done taking care of you." He gets up and crosses the room, but before Jason even has time to feel his absence he's back with a water bottle and a bar of chocolate from his share of Nico's imported stash. Seventy percent cacao—the more endorphins, the better, Jason told him when he first made a face about it, before he took a liking to it. 

"Don't use my logic against me." 

Percy snorts, breaking off a piece of the bar with a lopsided smile. "Try and stop me." 

Jason can barely even sit up—Percy notices, because of _ course _he does, and pushes him back down with a hand on his sternum, so that he's propped against the pillows—let alone fight back. If he's honest with himself, he never wanted to in the first place. 

He's a third of the way through the chocolate bar and almost finished with the water before his voice comes back, but he takes a moment just to look at Percy, curled in next to him, bare and loose and still flushed, sweat-damp hair sticking to the back of his neck. Stocky, tall, with broad shoulders and strong thighs and, of course, his ridiculously great ass—but still just the right size to tuck himself under Jason's arm and listen to his heartbeat. 

"There's nothing I wouldn't do for you." Jason brushes that damp hair back out of Percy's eyes, letting himself get lost in them again, paradoxically moored by his own helplessness. 

Warmly, Percy smiles, and he leans in for another kiss. 

"Right back at you. I owe you one." 

The remainder of Jason's angst dissipates like steam, and, pulse still going like a drumline, he finally hears himself laugh. Weakly, sure, but it's enough to make Percy beam, and it's worth everything for that alone. 

"I'll think of something tomorrow." 

"You should sleep, yeah. You're so exhausted you're starting to look like Nico." Percy starts pulling up the blankets, but pauses to give Jason a pointed look. "And no trying to draft a home repair spreadsheet tomorrow, either. When I said 'anything', I meant it, including handcuffing you to the couch and taking away your laptop." 

He'd do it, too. They might be in different weight classes, but even when Jason is at peak performance, Percy fights tricky and knows how to use it against him; even when he's trying to win, it never sticks, and they've been at an overall tie since they were sixteen and their very first spar ended in a draw. 

(Percy had let Jason think he'd won, then flipped him at the last second. Jason had countered, but he couldn't wrest back the upper hand. In retrospect, the thrill hadn't been quite so platonic.) 

"Alright, but you're hanging out with me and I get to pick what we watch." 

"Deal." Percy finishes settling them under the sheets, taking his usual place tucked against Jason's side when he's done. "Now go to sleep." 

"Yes, sir," Jason tells him, smirking, just to see what he'll do. 

Which turns out to be raising his head and cocking an eyebrow. For a second, they stare at each other, then Percy bursts into laughter. 

"You're such a _ brat _," he replies, breathless with amusement, and then Jason's gone too, the residual adrenaline spilling over and out of his mouth in semi-frantic giggles.

"Better go get a whip. Put me in my place." 

"I would, if I hadn't already gotten cozy." 

As soon as Percy says it, Jason remembers how fucking tired he is, having been wound almost tight enough to snap since his knee went out again. The pain is difficult and unpleasant, but the immobility it causes is _ exhausting, _keeping him from cooking like he used to or getting started on any of the thousand projects that need doing around the house. 

But for now, Percy's here, and it doesn't matter. 

"If I didn't have you, I would have lost my shit a long time ago." 

It's not really enough, but he can't seem to find better phrasing. Then there are lips against his neck and an arm around his waist, and he knows he doesn't have to—the message went through loud and clear. 

"Good. We're even." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ye gods. I don't know why I had so much trouble with this. For whatever reason, I just couldn't seem to figure out where it wanted go? I think it was halfway through February before I even landed on mirroring Praise Kink as a starting point. /sweats 
> 
> But here it is. Finally. And. I hit 3333 views about a week ago and I am so grateful for every dang one of them and thank you so much for being here on this inconsistent and somewhat chaotic journey with me! 
> 
> Next up, temperature play.


	6. Temperature Play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If you hurt yourself doing this, I'll be furious," Jason reminds him, hands tightening around his hips. Percy smiles, soft and warm and drenched and gorgeous, and slowly, carefully sinks down, braced against the wall and Jason's shoulder. 
> 
> "Don't worry," he says into Jason's throat, lips curving. "I know better than to damage Sir's favorite toy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started going the same way as the last two chapters, so I again cut myself off before I ended up with another 7k word plot dump. 8D; Of course, by necessity, I'll probably end up with one for the next chapter given that I may or may not already have 1400+ words of it...oops. But uh, for now, it seemed like it lent itself to a split here, so have one more gratuitous bit of porn before I get into the tangled pit of my eighty five thousand plot threads! :D 
> 
> <s>Content warning: Very Very Gallows Humor. I promise Nico is not actually a serial killer, it's just his Dark and Twisty Death Boy side showing.</s> OH MY GOD, WRONG CHAPTER, ME, THAT'S NEXT TIME, someone take away my access to the internet sgdfakgjaksg
> 
> (sorry if people got two notifications for this; I had a minor tussle with the draft-saving process and accidentally posted the chapter twice, whoops.)

Jason wakes to a beam of sunlight in his face and a warm body next to him, which makes up for the spots in his vision. There's a dull ache in his right knee, and he knows as soon as he moves it that'll turn into a knife under his patella, but that doesn't really matter either, this soon after returning to consciousness. Smiling, he buries his face in Percy's shoulder and lets himself relax into the fingertips that start running through his hair.

"Good morning, Sunshine." Percy's propped up on one elbow, free hand moving from Jason's head down to his neck and kneading at the muscle there. Ridiculously tense and quite painful, but it only takes a minute before the knot releases.

"...Did you take off my pants?"

Percy laughs, a sudden burst of sound that seems involuntary, like he can't quite push it down. "Shit–I'm sorry, dude, I just." He sags against the pillow, his grin sheepish. "I was watching you sleep last night, 'cause, you know, I'm me, and you kicked me in the shin, and I realized–"

He cuts himself off with another helpless snort of laughter. Jason raises an eyebrow. "Go on."

"I realized, not only had I not taken your pants off, I forgot to take your _boots_ off, _and_ my face was still covered in your jizz. I got it all over you too, from channeling my inner octopus right after. I laughed so hard at myself I was shocked I didn't wake you up."

"You must have worn me out," Jason tells him fondly. "I'm not surprised you went headlong into aftercare. You usually do."

"You also generally sleep like you got hit in the head with a brick. You didn't even flinch when I was cleaning you up. I had to scrub and everything, since I accidentally let it dry."

Percy flops over to kiss his clavicle. Warm, safe, protected, provided for–and still wearing his ownership in blue around his neck.

"It's because I feel safe with you. My primal instincts tell me you have the cave bears covered, so it's okay if I conk out." Jason pets the leather of the collar, inner wolf purring like a housecat. "This can't have been comfortable to sleep in, though."

"I don't like taking it off myself. I wanted to wait for you to do it."

He's said it before, and the look on his face is no less plaintive now than it had been the first time. Jason pulls him in for a kiss, then feeds the strap through the buckle and off. Before he can put it away, Percy grabs his wrist.

"Thank you again for last night. It really meant a lot to me."

"_You_ mean a lot to me." The play collar is off, but the daytime collar stays right where it is–stainless steel throughout, from the chain to padlock. He can sleep in it, get it wet, wear it just about anywhere; the most they have to do is take the padlock out of the links in the back and use it as another pendant when they're in mixed company.

The symbolism is calming, comforting; a port in a storm for both of them. Jason wouldn't give it up for anything short of Percy breaking his heart by asking.

But that fear is about as founded as Percy's abandonment anxiety, and there's no better proof than waking up to that winning smile. So the blue collar goes on the bedside table, and instead Jason takes hold of the feather pendant, stroking gently, and takes a minute to just look into Percy's eyes, at the curve of his lips–and he was right. The bar of gold light crossing Percy's shoulder, thrown over from the gap in the blinds, is absolutely breathtaking. Somehow, the widening of his grin is even more so.

“I know that face. That’s your great-lay face.”

“And my pleased-my-pet-is-happy face.”

“I _am_ pretty fucking happy,” Percy agrees, pushing himself up, and shakes his head when Jason feels himself pull into–oh, fine, a _pout_, at the absence of contact. “No, go back to the other one; your grumpy face is hot, but I’d rather have _you_ happy, too. In that vein, we’re gonna go take a shower. I have clothes set out already. You were out like a corpse, dude; I was starting to worry a little.”

Brilliantly as always, Percy manages to reframe the depressing fact that Jason needs help with basic self-care into something fun and potentially sexy. He’d started the habit back when Jason was recovering from surgery, turning it into an opportunity for service and a chance to suck him off from the shower chair; of course, baths would have been easier, but Jason’s cramped junior-year apartment hadn’t had one.

There’s a claw-foot tub upstairs, but it’s badly grody and so tiny that Will, the only one of them under six feet, is also the only one who can actually fit in it without his knees bending up near his ears–and even then, not by enough to make it comfortable. They’d been planning on tearing out the bathroom and remodeling it completely, but obviously those plans are stalled now and the best option he has is the shower downstairs, put in sometime in the eighties and still too short for him standing up.

At least they hadn’t really unpacked yet when it happened, and it had been pretty easy to swap Nico’s study with Percy and Jason’s bedroom. The ceilings downstairs are higher, too, and Jason has to admit it’s been nice not braining himself on the doorways quite so much, even if it is demoralizing being unable to access three quarters of his own house. The porch is difficult enough, and Nico’s been talking about putting in a ramp–

“I’ll let you fuck me,” Percy says, abruptly yanking Jason out of his ruminating and back to the present.

“Oh,” he responds, allowing Percy to take his hands and help him to his feet. “You’ll _let_ me, will you? Are you sure you don't mean 'beg'?”

“It won’t be easy.” It’s as though Jason never said anything. Percy makes sure there’s as much skin contact as possible as he supports Jason’s weight, distracting him with goosebumps and the lightly husky tone of those words. Jason is in yesterday’s lavender boxers, but Percy’s still naked, and stirring to half-hardness. “I’ll have to be careful. Sometime, I want to get support bars installed that I can hang onto, just for shower-chair sex.”

“I have the utmost faith in you and your acrobatic abilities.”

Gone unsaid as Percy guides him through through his routine (god knows why even now, after the second time Percy's had to start helping him stand up to piss in the morning, he still finds Jason attractive) is the gratitude, but Percy's in such a contagiously good mood it's hard to hold onto anything else.

Then the water's running and Jason's on the chair, watching the spray hit Percy's arching back, the shaking of his hands as he opens the cap of the waterproof lube, the way his mouth falls open around a sharp inhale when his hand disappears between his legs.

"If you hurt yourself doing this, I'll be furious," Jason reminds him, hands tightening around his hips. Percy smiles, soft and warm and drenched and _gorgeous_, and slowly, carefully sinks down, braced against the wall and Jason's shoulder.

"Don't worry," he says into Jason's throat, lips curving. "I know better than to damage Sir's favorite toy."

"You have no idea how hard this is for me." The best he can do is hold on, nails digging into Percy's wet skin.

"I know _exactly_ how hard this is for you, actually." Percy illustrates his point by rolling his hips. "Can I get on with it, please?"

"I told you you'd end up begging."

"I _always_ end up begging."

Somehow, Percy manages to make Jason feel like he's in control, even all but immobilized and totally helpless to any whim Percy might so much as consider.

"I want to pin you to the wall."

"Nnh." Percy bites at Jason's throat, remembering–has to be remembering the last time they did it, right after moving in, too fucking desperate to even make it to the bed after their first dinner in the new house.

"Hold you there, your legs around my waist. Make you beg until you can't even talk."

"We'll figure it out," Percy consoles, breathless, winding his arm around Jason's neck. "Just–let me make you feel good. Please. That's all I want right now. You've been _so_ stressed."

"So have you." Jason bites Percy's shoulder, reveling in the sharp inhale, the sweet whine as he moves to the base of Percy's throat. "Caregiver fatigue is a thing."

"Jesus fucking _Christ_, man, I must–nnh." Percy shudders, and Jason bites again, harder. "I must be doing something wrong if you can still lecture me about invalidating my own problems while you're balls-deep in my ass."

"Maybe I just care that much."

"Fuck, babe–" Percy pulls back to look him in the eye, and it makes every point of contact between them feel alight with electricity. "Please. I'm begging you. Think about yourself for two seconds."

"I will when you do," Jason promises, voice a low growl.

"Oh, screw you."

"I thought it was the other–"

Before he can finish the thought, Percy grabs Jason by the face and kisses him, hard, with tongue. A lot of it. By the time he breaks it, Jason's trembling with the effort it's taking to keep from tipping over.

"For the love of everything holy," Percy pants, water running from his hair down his face, "_shut up and fuck me_."

"You're gonna regret your mouth later."

"I sure hope so."

Jason figures out–or maybe Percy guides him to it–that he can in fact still manhandle a little, by pulling Percy down by the hips. It comes with the bonus of getting Percy to shut up, too, words stolen by increasingly frantic moans. Steam rises around them, dark hair sticks to Percy's neck; they're both pink from the heat of the water and exertion and each other.

It's then that he gets the idea.

Just close enough to–he lets go of one of Percy's hips, waits a second to make sure he won't fall, and turns the tap to cold, just for an instant.

It helps cool him down a little–he can't let himself finish first as a matter of pride, not unless it's on purpose–but more importantly, it makes Percy throw his head back and _howl_.

"Knew it." Jason bites again, encouraging another hungry noise.

"Please," Percy chokes, muscles drawn tight, curling forward to bury his face in Jason's neck. "_Please_."

"You're so easy," Jason praises, shivering at the _twitch_ he feels against his wet stomach. "It's not even real ice and you're falling apart. I'll have to use some later, now that you've given me such a gorgeous opening act."

"Please let me come," Percy begs again, hot around him, the last rivulets of cold water hitting Jason's chest. Strikingly beautiful as he strains to hold himself up, hold himself _back_, and Jason's too close to put up any more of a fight.

"Show me. Right now, as hard as you can."

"_Aah_–!"

Okay, so maybe that loud, desperate noise means Jason can't control himself anymore and actually _does_ come first, but Percy's barely an instant behind him, the movement of his hips sporadic and frantic and stunning and exactly where Jason needs him, always.

And maybe Percy finishes hard enough that a little of it hits Jason's neck, and maybe it's a little disappointing to have it immediately washed away by the water cascading over both of them. But then Percy sighs, sweet and satisfied, and the loss of his heat in Jason's lap isn't so bad when the alternative is the sound of another cap opening and the smell of pineapple and coconut and sure, familiar hands working shampoo into his hair.

"I love you," he tells Percy, quiet, and there's a hand sliding to the back of his neck, hot from the water and firmly reassuring.

"I've never doubted it, bossman."

The spell lasts long enough for them to dry off and for Percy, genius as always, to make helping Jason dress feel like an act of reverence. It only breaks when Nico, guiltily chewing on his lip, knocks and pokes his head around the door.

"Sorry for interrupting, but the girls had their flight rerouted in Kentucky and they're getting in at noon instead of four-thirty."

"Well, shit. Check-in isn't until four, right?" Percy runs a hand through his hair, dark brows drawing up in concern.

"I told them we'd pick them up and do lunch. Tempest has enough room for them and their luggage."

Jason has a used hybrid minivan, finished in a soft slate blue; large enough for him to comfortably drive while still economically and environmentally sensible, it's also side-splittingly funny to all three of his housemates. He manages to swallow the urge to ask where the hilarity is now that they actually need his _soccer mom wheels_.

"What about the furbaby?" Percy frowns. "One of us should stay behind with Jason and Mrs. O'Leary, in case something happens."

"Hey, who said anything about me staying behind? I haven't seen them since the wedding."

Percy opens his mouth, but Nico cuts him off with a smirk.

"I already called Beckendorf. He'll watch her until we can get them in their room. They did fine when Jason had his boot fitting; they'll be fine now. They'll hang onto her carseat, too, so there's actually room for the _ladies_ as well as their bags."

"And a little bit of a walk to the terminal might do me some good," Jason adds, squeezing Percy's shoulder. "I'm supposed to be doing weight-bearing as tolerated anyway."

"If it starts to bother you, I'm getting one of those airport wheelchairs, and I am fully prepared to wrestle you into it if I have to." Percy scowls, but seems to accept the truce, albeit reluctantly.

“We should go. It’s already after ten-forty.”

“Shit,” Percy says again, stepping away from Jason with a reticence that seems like it’s physically painful. “Alright, I’ll get the dog, you get the alpha.”

“Yes, sir,” Nico deadpans. Percy sticks out his tongue as he passes, and Nico retaliates by swatting his ass, and it strikes Jason with a sudden razor-sharp clarity how unbelievably lucky he is to be privy to that moment of intimacy.

“What are we going to do for food?” Jason grabs his cane from the coat rack on their way out the front door, but he still puts a hand on Nico’s shoulder when they hit the porch stairs–he can hear Percy pleading with Mrs. O’Leary to stand still so he can put her harness on–and tries not to let the twinging show on his face.

“Take-out, obviously. That grill we like does breakfast; I already called in an order. And yes, they do mochas, and yes, I got you one.”

“You think of everything, don’t you?” And, strangely, there’s a little bit of a charge where they’re touching, and something flutters in the back of Jason’s awareness that he can’t quite get a grasp on–something that tightens when Nico looks at him with that intense scrutiny and barest hint of a smile.

“Someone has to rescue the two of you from yourselves. If it were up to you, you’d die of starvation because you’d be too busy fucking like bunnies to remember to eat.”

It breaks the tension of the mood, along with a booming bark and a yelp of protest from the porch behind them.

“Hey–what have we said about pulling?” Percy manages to dig in his heels before she can bound over and take out Jason’s other knee, but Nico still gets a protective arm around his waist, warmth spreading outwards from the point of contact.

“She’s excited to see Uncle Charlie.”

She wags her tail, hard enough that the _thump-thump-thump_ against Percy’s leg is audible. “That or she thinks we’re going to the og-day ark-pay.”

It might even bruise later. It’s too soon after the intensity of that morning, but if it weren’t, Jason would be stirring with interest at the idea. Percy’s just captivating when he’s banged up–always has been, and Jason’s painted it a hundred times already, but he still finds himself looking forward to working on another.

Nico opens the passenger side door for him, offering a hand to brace him as he climbs up, before circling to the back door to help Percy wrangle their enormous pet into her car seat. The sound of their bickering wraps around Jason like a familiar embrace, and he settles back to let it wash over him.

_Family_, his heart says. _Pack_, insists the wild part of him, much deeper and more instinctively proud. In the end, though, they're really the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will include THE LADIES–Piper, Reyna and Annabeth. I've been planning on bringing them in for a while, and I'm pretty excited to write them. I have a bit of a block when it comes to smut that isn't m/m (long story; I'm also just really just not very good at it), but I do absolutely love them to tiny bits (~inseparable~, eh? sounds like a sapphic triad, fight me) and they will at least be featured prominently in a non-smutty sense. 
> 
> <s>The kink is teacher/student, and will be probably be a roleplay scene of some kind</s> Actually, I lied, which I do every so often; I went to pick the expo back up and realized it made more sense to have a repeat of the boot worship method. I'm going to...have to either start accepting that I write huge plot dumps or make peace with the chapter count constantly elevating and maybe reassessing my stance on breaking it up when it gets plotty on me. >>; 
> 
> It will (still!) also have that whole exposition dump I mentioned, but I'll throw in a page-break for anyone who's just here for the porn. :|b


	7. Student/Teacher - part one (nonsmut)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am yours to command, tessoro." 
> 
> It's so calm and practiced that for a second, even Percy can't tell if he's joking. The answer is probably 'a little, but not entirely'. Nico's ears go red again, his whole demeanor a little subdued, but there's a shadow of a smile that won't quite go away. 
> 
> "I never should have agreed to teach you a damn thing. You're abusing your new powers."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **June 27th, 2020:** Just as a heads-up, since it's smacking me in the face at the moment, I always tank in the summer. For some reason, my wimpy little body and all of its many Chronic Illnesses cannot tolerate any temperature higher than 75F/~24C, and as the temperatures climb so do my godawful flares, which kinda gets in the way of writing stuff. :x I'm still alive, I'm just trying to stay on top of my migraines before they become incapacitating and stuff. 
> 
> Also, check out my profile, I made an email address specifically for this series and you are welcome and encouraged to use it! 
> 
> Thanks as always, beloveds. 💜  
\--
> 
> No smut in this one. See end of chapter notes for more detail on how I'm planning to move forward with this! 
> 
> **Content warning** for that super morbid gallows humor I incorrectly warned for in the last chapter. 8D
> 
> (P.S., May 8th: you are not seeing things; I frequently go back and retcon small shit, for which I am sorry. 8D; I think it's because gdocs is black on white and my browser is on night mode, so my brain legit skips over things when I'm drafting? Point is, none of it's particularly important, just a habit of mine, you're not really missing much but if something later contradicts something you remember this is probably why! Cough.)

“–gentle exercise, but not too much. And make sure she gets a nap after.” 

“I’ve got it.” 

“And she needs a bigger helping of food than it says on the—”

“I _ know, _Percy.” 

"And her car seat needs to be fixed to the same thing you use for a baby's–" 

"I've done it before, remember? You were there." 

“And call me the _ second _something–”

“PERCY. Charlie knows what the fuck he's doing. Shut up and _ get out _ before I _ throw _ you out _ . _"

By the way Beckendorf keeps up that quiet smile, hand secure on the back of Mrs. O’Leary’s neck, he isn’t fazed by the volume with which Clarisse cuts in. He’s probably used to it by now, and okay, maybe there hasn’t been much bite to her bark since high school (and, as she puts it, 'an assload of therapy'). In her own way, she’s trying to calm Percy’s anxiety about leaving Mrs. O’Leary in someone else’s care for an afternoon. 

Mrs. O’Leary clearly doesn’t share Percy’s concerns—he’s pretty sure that Beckendorf is her favorite person in the entire world, including him, from the way she forgets he exists every time they visit—and seems happy to relax on the floor by her favorite person in the entire world and give him a wide, floppy-tongued grin. It _ should _be reassuring in isolation, but it isn’t. 

It’s astonishing how similar this feels to the weeks leading up to Estelle’s birth. Suddenly, everything is potentially dangerous if not deadly, the fragility of their condition in clear and constant focus. Daily life is terrifying, and it’ll get worse before it gets better. Once the puppies get here, there will be seven totally helpless little lives in his hands, plus their mother's, and there will be seven times as many things that could go horribly, horribly wrong.

If anything’s going to help in the short term, it’ll be leaning on Beckendorf and Clarisse and Silena and Chris, who’ve already proven their babysitter chops with Estelle and who grok the situation on a level nobody else does—nobody else _ can _; a fourple is something you don’t really understand until you’re in one, and they’d been invaluable when he found himself neck-deep in his lack of knowledge and practical experience. 

"If she so much as sniffles, you'll be the second person I call." Beckendorf meets his eyes, and Percy can tell that _ he's _ reassuring, too, reminding Percy he's got the logistics covered.

"Who's the first?" 

"The vet, obviously." 

Beckendorf smiles and so does Mrs. O'Leary, huffing gently as if to say _ it's okay, Dad, we'll be just fine. _

"Good answer."

"I figured you'd think so." 

So, finally, after a minute or two longer of watching her get herself settled in for some quality scritching time, just to make absolutely sure she’s as happy as she seems, Percy lets his shoulders slump in defeat. 

“I don’t think she’s even gonna miss me,” he says mournfully, but hopefully they’ll hear the gratitude he can’t quite verbalize. For plausible deniability’s sake, he fires a smirk in Clarisse’s direction. “I’d let you throw me wherever you pleased if I thought you’d still respect me in the morning.” 

“I never respected you to begin with!” But she’s grinning as she shoves him towards the door. "Tell Annabeth I'm going to wipe the floor with her ass on Saturday." 

"You _ wish. _The Fulminaughties have won their last six consecutive tournaments. Wise Girl and Reyna are the best captains the team's had in a decade." 

"I will wipe the floor with _your _ass if you don't _get_ _out of my condo_. They can't give me a chance if you knuckleheads leave them stranded at LaGuardia."

Which is true–and Percy gains a new appreciation for the idea of having one's heart torn between two places. "Just, real quick, should we check the phone numbers one more time before I–"

"Good_bye_, Jackson." 

"_ WUFF!" _

"Oh, _ fine, _ I'm going." Percy sends one last look Mrs. O'Leary's way– _ is she trying to tell me something urgent? Is she panting because she's hot or because she's in labor? She's not whining, and she IS wearing a giant black fur coat, and she's great at sensing my moods and probably just wants to let me know she's cool, but– _and forces himself to turn around. 

As he opens the door, he can hear Beckendorf's gentle baritone and Clarisse downright baby-talking from behind him–_ who's the best doggy in the whole world? It's you, big mama, yes, you are– _and another happy, booming bark, and it calms some of his hamster-wheeling. 

All told, even through the constant low-key panic, he’s in a considerably better mood than he’d been expecting when he heads out of their building and into the gray afternoon to hunt for Jason’s minivan. Turns out they’re circling the block, which he misses the first time and almost misses the second, until Nico lays on the horn and makes him jump three feet in the air. He almost gets run over in the crosswalk by an overly-impatient sports car, the owner of whom flips him off, so he returns the favor as he jogs the rest of the way over.

“Thanks, Mr. Jaguar Jerk,” he grouches over his shoulder, hauling open the back door. “I had the light!” 

“Welcome to the big apple, gattino.” 

The comment comes from Jason, the Italian very slightly accented—likely more to Nico’s fluent ear, but Jason’s always been good at languages, and it turns out that Nico is a pretty damn good teacher, too.

“Don't driver-splain Manhattan traffic to me; I'm the one who was actually _ born _here!” 

The quip comes out whiny and without teeth, but both of the guys within earshot of him know perfectly well that he can bite when he wants to. Whether either of them _ cares _ about riling him up is a different story. 

"You know nothing of traffic," Jason replies darkly, shooting a grimace Percy's way. "The only place worse than Los Angeles is Boston. New York City is pastry." 

"Try a jam in a canal," Nico offers, just in time to slam on his brakes with a string of colorful, multilingual verbiage as a white SUV cuts in front of them. He honks the horn, and the SUV honks back, which Nico meets with a few more curses, another, longer honk and scowl so withering it could kill grass. 

(Percy knows that scowl, and doesn't envy the other driver or miss being on the receiving end of it in the slightest.) 

"At least you could theoretically swim away from a twenty-two-gondola pileup." 

"Ew. No. They're polluted as fuck. You'd probably come out with a tail."

"That's depressing." 

"Which is why I've invested heavily in three different organizations focused on cleanup and conservation efforts." Nico meets his eyes for a second in the mirror, a hint of a smile in them before he turns his attention back to the road. "Remind me and I'll show you some quarterly newsletters when we get home. It's still pretty bad, but they're getting better." 

"I'm sure the influx of cash helps–" 

"Don't you _ dare _call me–" 

"–_ daddy~" _

Impressively, Nico manages to come perilously close to hitting Percy with the empty paper coffee cup he hurls over his shoulder, blind, into the back seat. 

"I know how to kill you and make it look like an accident."

"And-or how to get rid of the body without leaving forensic evidence, I know." But Nico's ears are also scarlet, and Percy can't even resist poking at him under normal circumstances, let alone when he's being a prude about something he's secretly into. "Or, more accurately, you _ will, _ in a few years _ . _I'm safe until you finish grad school, at least." 

"You don't know my extracurriculars. I've told you before, I'm probably a serial killer." 

"Or a stripper." 

"Can't I be both? Maybe that's my victim pool." 

With anyone else, the turn of conversation might have been worrying, but Nico's on track to become a medical examiner and likes picking apart all of the errors in gritty police procedurals as a mnemonic, and Percy nearly busted a gut last month when he'd been sitting in on a study session and the salty local cop of the week described one of the agents as a– _ did he just say 'a pipe-cleaner with eyes'? Oh my god, dude, you can't tell me you don't realize that's an exact description of you– _ so now gritty-procedural verbiage is kind of their _ thing, _even if it is a little...well, dark. 

"Are you this morbid when you flirt with your husband, or am I just special?" 

"Nobody, gattino, infuriates me quite like you do." Nico smirks at Jason as he makes a right hand turn, and Jason grins back, and Percy's stomach turns to mush. "You're right; it does suit him." 

"_ Kitten _? Seriously?" 

"If you insist on calling me that other embarrassment to the English language, yes, _ kitten, _seriously." 

"I mean, he has a point." Jason looks terribly amused, the worst kind where he's having so much fun watching them argue he won't do more than play devil's advocate, just to fuel the fire. "You _ do _like throwing your money around, making your playthings feel pretty and spoiled." 

"I do _ not _ throw my money around on making you feel _ pretty– _"

"Dude, you've swatched all three of us and we have an entire fucking closet _ just for the clothes you've bought as presents. _" 

"–I'm investing in your professional wardrobes, thank you, and _ Silena _ had _ everyone _ swatched in high school; I just asked her to lend me her notes. Nothing wrong with playing to your strengths."

Percy scoffs. "Professional. Right. I'm _ definitely _wearing those electric blue panties to my next job interview."

Nico briefly meets his eyes in the rearview mirror again, one eyebrow arched. "Says the guy who's actually worn them to _ work, _ three separate times." 

"I work at a dungeon! My outfit includes fucking _ daisy dukes! _What's the point of shorts that show your ass if you're not wearing cool underwear?" 

"Your tips went up after he started messing around with your color palettes, though." 

"And _ you," _Nico growls, lightly smacking Jason's arm on the way to braking for a light, "do realize you included yourself among my 'playthings', right?" 

"I am yours to command, tessoro." 

It's so calm and practiced that for a second, even Percy can't tell if he's joking. The answer is probably 'a little, but not entirely'. Nico's ears go red again, his whole demeanor a little subdued, but there's a shadow of a smile that won't quite go away. 

"I never should have agreed to teach you a damn thing. You're abusing your new powers." 

"I think you're kind of into it, and you just don't want to admit it."

"I know how not to leave evidence of _ your _body, too. Giants dissolve in quicklime just like anyone else." 

There's this look Jason gets, one that's totally different from the look he gives Percy, but just as affectionate and reserved for Nico. Percy's pretty sure neither of them quite realizes it–or maybe it's more that they're _ pretending _ they don't, probably out of some misguided attempt not to push each other or break the spell of what they already have, sharing Percy as they do.

It's something he and Will vent to each other about a lot, these days. They both know that, infuriatingly, the other two need to come around on their own, but they're also agreed that the idea of locking their introverts in a closet until they stop being clams long enough to work it out is getting increasingly tempting. 

And, yeah, of course sometimes Percy gets a little jealous, but the entire point is to _ talk _about it instead of sneaking around. When it comes to him, they're perfectly capable of thorough, explicit communication, but when it comes to each other, it's like they're trying to paint a picture blindfolded while wearing boxing gloves. 

Someday, they'll figure out how to navigate past that skittishness. In the meantime, as infuriating as it is, it's also kind of cute, in its own way.

–

"We meet again." 

By the time they get there, Reyna is already at the baggage claim, keeping watch over a sizable pile of suitcases and duffel bags. (For the second time, Percy mentally apologizes to the powers that be for making fun of Jason's van.) She turns around at the sound of Nico's voice, breaking into a grin, and throws her arms around his neck. 

"You've hungered for this all your life! Take your revenge!" 

(They'd all known each other already, but it wasn't until Nico's freshman year and his first time under the lights that the group of them really gelled, probably in part because they all had the common experience of being blown out of the water by his searing tenor. Up until then, he'd only done church choir and run crew–had admitted, a little embarrassed, that the latter had given him an excuse to stare at Percy from the wings without anyone jumping to the wrong conclusion and teasing him about glaring his competition for Annabeth's affections to death. He'd always had the capacity, but it took Hazel begging him to audition with her to get him to even _ try _ singing solo in front of anyone, and the performances he and Reyna got out of each other had done wonders to kickstart the sense of confidence he'd gained over the run of the show. 

Percy had gotten chills for days after callbacks, every time he remembered their voices winding around each other. Sure, he and Jason had been good together–they spent most of high school cast opposite each other in as many roles as their respective ranges could possibly pull off, and most people had sort of assumed that they'd keep up with their pattern. Which they had, actually, because Jason was so balls-to-the-wall busy with football season and bringing up his GPA he'd specifically requested a smaller part, and happened to be concerningly good at playing drunk. Turned out to be ideal, as it gave Nico and Reyna an opportunity to discover their stage chemistry was just as good, if not better.) 

Nico is still wearing that confidence now, even more easily. It's in his grin as he winds his lanky arms around her, squeezing hard. "Will's at work, but he sends his love. I hope the trip wasn't _ too _terrible." 

"No worse than any other airport clusterjam I've been through. At least we made our connecting flight, even if we had to run like hell to do it." She steps back so she can make the rounds, hugging Jason tight around the middle. "How's your knee doing?" 

"Been better, been a _ lot _ worse." Jason hugs her back–he gives some of the best hugs, ever, second maybe only to Percy's mom, so he can't blame her for lingering a little. 

Then it's his turn, and while he has his chin over her shoulder, he catches sight of Piper and Annabeth holding hands and heading their way from the bathroom, and all of a sudden–

_ she's here _–

–his heart is going three hundred miles an hour and he's blushing like a middle schooler and letting go and breaking into a run, and he doesn't stop until he's spinning Annabeth in a circle and laughing, desperately and half because of the adrenaline, into her neck. 

"I missed you too, seaweed brain." 

Sometimes, their history makes him queasy when they see each other again. Mostly, he's pretty good at stuffing it down, and, okay, fine, maybe he shouldn't be so hard on Nico and Jason for the same thing. 

But she's smacking at his shoulder and telling him to _ put me down, you mollusk, you're going to dislocate my girlfriend's elbow, _and as similar as Jason and Piper are, it shouldn't extend to their joints, so Percy lets himself be a tiny bit of a hypocrite and ignore his feelings in favor of loading up the luggage cart Nico's wheeling over–he must have gotten it while Percy was taking off across the room. 

"What on _ earth _do you have in here, dark matter?" 

"Skates, helmets, protective gear, so, you know, might as well be." Piper bends over to help him with the duffels, and Percy has to choke back laughter when both Jason and Reyna turn heads to watch, neither of them seeming clear on who they're ogling. 

(Not that he doesn't understand. Piper's ass is awesome–better than Percy's, frankly; she's a good eight inches shorter than he is, but they can wear the same jeans if she rolls up the ankles. He's talked about it a handful of times with Jason–that if they were to do with anyone else what they're doing with Will and Nico, it'd be with the girls–and while that's still a private far-off someday they haven't acknowledged to anyone but each other, they're all far enough removed from their previous relationship configurations that it doesn't hurt anymore to think about. 

Well, most of them.) 

"...I want is pizza that isn't an inedible pile of garbage," Annabeth is saying, her voice ringing like a bell, and there's that one little wrench in those plans that just won't seem to go away. She's shifting her weight as she says it, and Jason is making a point of looking somewhere off in the distance, the lines of his broad shoulders tenser than steel cable. 

"Sounds good. That way, we don't have to worry about whether there's something Pipes can have." 

The two of them haven't quite managed to get past that hump yet, and it's killing Percy a little to feel pulled between them, but he can't do anything more about it than he can about Jason's reticence with Nico. At least they're still capable of talking to each other, even if they can't make eye contact while they're doing it and end up relying on the others as a buffer. 

"Now that you say that, I'm hangry enough to stab someone. We haven't eaten since breakfast." 

(Piper meets Percy's eyes a second later. They must come from the same planet, because somehow they can have entire conversations solely in facial expressions. She notices the weirdness too, and feels just as helpless to fix it as he does, and yes, it _ absolutely is _ exhausting.) 

Percy takes hold of the luggage cart and starts to push, taking a minute to calm himself down with the sound of Nico and Reyna debating whether they need to go all the way to little Italy–Nico's going to win that one, as he has very strong feelings about mozzarella and the poor quality that tends to come out of any kind of tourist trap. He'll probably win the argument about paying for it, too, which he has yet to lose with anyone he's close to. 

Piper's holding onto Jason's right elbow, and Percy's whole back relaxes when she drags him over to a bench to wait to be picked up. The rest of them make it all the way out to the car and halfway through loading everything into the trunk before Annabeth makes a defeated noise and leans her forehead against his upper back. 

"He still hates me, doesn't he." 

"I think it's more that he thinks _ you _ still hate _ him _. You weren't exactly his biggest fan at the beginning of Phase Two." 

"Well, yeah. He made you cry. I was contractually obligated," she grumbles into his shirt, her hands coming up around his waist. Familiar. Completely alien. He's still not used to the sight of a ring on that hand, a small and delicate thing with a spray of lapis lazuli set into the spiraling metal. 

"To be fair, you've made me cry, too." To combat the incoming guilty spasm, Percy covers her hands and squeezes them. "But that just means you're even, right?" 

"I guess. It's just so _ awkward _." 

She steps back, frowning. More than anything in the world, she hates having problems she can't solve–it gnaws at her like a festering sore, making her question her entire sense of self. More than anything in the world, Percy hates seeing his important people suffering, and Annabeth was one of the first and is still one of the most. 

(Funny that he'd ended up crying on her shoulder when Jason had gotten tangled in his own head and dumped him in sophomore year of college, the same way he'd cried on Jason's shoulder in junior year of high school about her. He's not questioning it, still too busy appreciating that it pulled them out of their two and a half year streak of no contact at all.) 

"I'll talk to him," he promises, meeting familiar, stunning gray eyes. "It'll be okay. He just needs a clue-by-four, sometimes." 

She relaxes with a snort of laughter–it probably helps when Reyna hip-checks her on the way to heaving her suitcase into the trunk. She winces, still smiling, a sliver of excitement under it that Percy is all too familiar with, given how often he feels it too when Jason "accidentally" digs into a bruise. 

"_Ow. _That was mean. You know I landed on that asscheek yesterday." 

"You like me when I'm mean," Reyna counters, smirking–and, _ god _, that stare is just as intense as Jason's. Percy deals with the sympathy shivers by waggling his eyebrows, and gets a smack on the arm for his trouble.

"Save it for your boys, barnacle brat." Annabeth still knows him better than almost anyone else, and for a second he's sure she can see right through him. The kiss he gets on the cheek makes him certain. 

–

"–hit the deck like she ran over a banana peel–I could hear her land from the other side of the track, but she just got right back up and kept going. Scored six more points before she had to pass the panties and sit on a bag of ice." 

Annabeth is downright _ blushing _at the attention from Reyna, playing absently with the end of one of her braids. She wore her hair in a ponytail all through high school, but these days she's into herringbones, which fit under her helmet and still keep her hair out of her face as she zooms around the rink. They suit her; sporty and practical, but still elegant and feminine. Just like her. Percy's heart flutters, like it always does and always will, especially when she breaks into a smirk like that.

"I'll show you the bruise later." 

"It's gnarly," Piper adds. "Her whole thigh is black and purple." 

"Estelle is still whining about being too young for the youth league," Percy mutters, folding a slice in half. "I'm dreading her twelfth birthday. She's already got it in her head that she has to fall a thousand times before she can say she knows how to skate. So far, I think she's taken about a decade off my lifespan." 

"She's good about using her pads, at least." Nico has that same tension in his face, though; his relationship with Estelle is special, and he's been anxious over her wellbeing since she was twenty months and toddling around at rehearsals. "But I'm with Percy. I'm ninety-four years old now from how much I've aged, watching her wipe out." 

"You were an old man anyway." Jason smirks. "Are you ever planning on upgrading your brick?" 

"I know too much about smartphones to ever want a smartphone. You can sell your soul to Big Brother if you want. I'll pass."

After a few minutes of debating the drawbacks and benefits of the information age, Percy finds himself going quiet. Jason has, too–he hasn't directly acknowledged Annabeth since the airport, and ever since he started looking for it, Percy finds those little hiccups are suddenly blaring like a tornado siren. It keeps pulling his focus away from the conversation and his companions, buzzing at him like gnat just out of swatting reach. 

It's not until he hears Piper's voice around a familiar word that he snaps out of it. 

"So, I'm too young for adult Fantine. I showed up at the audition and they were looking for late twenties or early thirties."

As fast as he came back to the present, Percy's seven years in the past, choking up so badly during her death scene in the first jog-through of act one that he'd had to leave the auditorium to splash his face, struggling to get his breath back in time for his entrance with Frank. At first, there's a wave of disappointment for her, but then he notices the looks on their faces–all three of them–and at the same time Nico raises an eyebrow. 

"But you're not too young for Eponine," Jason guesses, and Piper splits into a huge grin.

"The show's in June. I honestly wasn't expecting to get in at all–community theater nepotism and all that."

He finds himself beaming and throwing an arm around her shoulder, squeezing hard. 

"I'm not surprised in the slightest. You crushed Tuberculosis Mom the first time."

"Frankly, you were the best out of every single one of us. No offense to the rest of our present company." Nico smirks, a warmth to it that makes Percy shiver. 

Piper, blushing, leans her head against Percy's as she reaches across the table to push gently at Nico's arm. "No, _ you _were the best out of every single one of us." 

"Tie," Jason and Reyna say in unison, and the whole table erupts into laughter. Even now, with thousands of miles between them, they speak the same language. It's true, too–Nico had been equally responsible for the lump in Percy's throat back then. 

It makes up for the palpable chill in the air between him and Annabeth, almost.

The nostalgia carries them through the rest of lunch–_ do you remember the look on Jason's face when Percy kissed him closing night at the final battle, I thought he was going to have a stroke; man, my mother still chokes up a little when she thinks too hard about your take on her favorite character; Beth, I'm amazed you built a flawless turntable that didn't malfunction once, you must have been blessed by the gods of set design; that whole run was an exercise in learning how _ not _ to cry onstage, and how is Hazel, by the way? I'm still mad at her for A Little Fall Of Rain, maybe she can give you some tips– _and the frozen yogurt and window shopping at Saint Mark's Place after, just to kill another hour or two. 

(Nico nudges his shoulder and winks at him when they pass Trash and Vaudeville. He doesn't have to say a word to get across his message. _ Next time. _) 

But it feels like everything is speeding up, too, and by the time they've unloaded the luggage at the hotel and hugged goodbye–_ don't beat yourself up over it, okay?– _his defenses are so close to crumbling that all it takes to blow through them is the startle when Nico shuts the back door after him. 

"You two are driving me up the fucking wall," he tells Jason as soon they're both buckled. "We need to fix this. I'm not spending my whole life running interference between you every time you're in the same room." 

Jason sighs, leaning against the window with a grimace. "When you're right, you're right, and you're right. This isn't fair to her _ or _you. I just…" 

He trails off, but before he can pick back up again, Nico's sliding behind the wheel, and quickly raising an eyebrow at the thick, gluey tension.

"I'm not going to ask, but I _ will _ take my husband out for midnight pancakes if you want some space to talk later." 

Jason nods before Percy can even react, and his face is so twisted with guilt–shame, maybe–it deflates some of Percy's resolve. 

"Before that, though, you two owe me a tag team, and Jason owes me ice." A temporary truce, one that never fails to make either of his partners perk up. 

"I _ did _promise I'd skill-share for the Italian. Since the cooking's on hold for now, what about a private lesson in making our boy scream? Advanced temperature play." 

"Wasn't Will supposed to be involved? Are you really trying to cheat my spouse out of a foursome after a hell week of double shifts?" 

"So think of it as a dress rehearsal." 

Nico huffs in concession. "I want to do the rigging, though. I haven't in a while, and I've been working on my ties." 

"Extra credit, huh?" Jason grins, and Percy can see the hair on the back of Nico's arm stand up, right in sync with his own. "Be careful, or you'll start to look like you're trying to suck up."

"Heh. Suck."

Percy makes his usual immature quip, but his heart isn't really in it. Hopefully, wearing themselves out first will make it harder to work up the irritation necessary to start a full-blown fight, and he'll be able to let go of the memory of arms around his waist, tight and insecure, long enough to participate. 

He's not sure how realistic that is, though. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. First. In my experience, singing is, much like drawing, a learned skill that can be improved with practice, and a lot of the time the people who are the most self-conscious about "[sounding] like a dying cat" are the ones with a good to excellent sense of pitch, because they're hearing themselves make mistakes that sound much more wrong to them than anyone else. Further, Percy plays the kazoo, which has no possible form of pitch control built into it and requires the ability to carry a tune, and seems to love music and has Very Strong Feelings about Grover's pipe-playing, which also tells me his ear is probably better than he thinks it is by a huge margin. :| Add that he thinks he's terrible at everything all the time and I decided, you know what? FUCK IT, Will's dad Fred caught him young and gave him private lessons. Don't @ me.
> 
> Secondly, I'm reworking my plan of attack here, I think. I'm worrying a little about burning out on smut (there are only so many positions before it gets repetitive, cough), so I think what I'm going to do from here is treat them as seeds of inspiration. Sometimes it'll be an explicit smut scene, sometimes it'll be a vague theme threaded somewhere, others it'll be a brief allusion as a springboard for totally unrelated dump of plot. Much like this one. 
> 
> Sorry if anyone finds themselves disappointed by a smutless chapter in a kink they were looking forward to. ;; I've got some ideas for revisiting previous ones in later bits, so I'm hoping I'll eventually find a way to work it into SOME smut, but I think this is the most realistic option in terms of how I write. 
> 
> (Remember when I said this was a collection of shorts? Never, ever believe me when I say ANYTHING, apparently.) 
> 
> You are all my starshines and I'm always thinking of you. Please give yourself a hug/high five/wave/insert preferred gesture of support here from me.
> 
> Oh and I forgot to mention! Next up, pet play.


	8. Student/Teacher - part two (nonsmut)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "For someone who complains so much about her jealous streak, you sure have a big fucking problem with me being friends with my ex."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ZEUS MIND THAT THIS COULD BE TRIGGERY.** The comprehensive list of content warnings is at the "more notes" section, so as not to ruin it for anyone who would prefer to go in blind, but please take care of yourself here, no hard feelings if you skip it, the back button is a safeword, etc etc I swear I'll get something cute up soon besides the bits of cuteness relief I managed to shove in for the sake of my own nerves. GOD. THE ANGST. 
> 
> If you want to know if there's something specific but you don't want to read the whole list or really have any questions at all, feel free to ask! I'm happy to help. I can be reached via the comments or **pigeonlikesthecure@gmail.com** since I threw that into an existing author's note without much of any notification. Cough. 
> 
> (<s>I'm sorry, I'm not going through and editing out every single extra pagebreak just now, I CAN'T, _I'M NOT DOING IT_, I'll get to it later :c)</s> Fixed as of September 1st!
> 
> FURTHER (less) IMPORTANT BITS:  
-I swapped Fantine for Eponine in the last chapter because I realized I liked it better and I'm prone to going back and retconning, as I've said before. If I reach something like this where it's going to come up later, I will make a little note at the beginning of the next chapter that mentions it for those of you who don't want to slog through the whole darn thing again! ^^;  
-I took out tags for characters who are only in a line or two because I realized I was contributing to my pet peeve of tagging ships that are only there as throwaway lines. Will revise as cameos become regulars. 
> 
> Much hearts, stay cool if you can, I'll worry about all of you if I damn well please.

"–still punishing her for something she did almost a _decade_ ago, which she and I have _already worked through_–" 

"I am not _ punishing _her for–" 

"Horseshit. You've been doing it since we started talking again, which I'd like to remind you was a result of _ you _ being a patronizing ass and _ her _ being mature enough to look past the dumb shit we did in high school when I needed her in my corner because _ you left me there by myself _."

It stings, having Percy dig at him like that, lip curled into a scowl. It's supposed to. The heat that crawls up Jason's neck is acidic and deeply unpleasant and he finds himself mentally walling off from the sensation, a habit from years of pushing through injury after injury until he could barely feel the constant ache in his joints anymore. 

The conversation started out okay, softened by the afterglow of the ice cubes and rope and Nico's viciously fast learning speed, but it always builds up to this in the end. Percy, loyal and compassionate and endlessly forgiving, coming to Annabeth's defense with increasing vehemence; Jason, equally protective, stuck in the past and unable to let go of a cascade of mental images that still give him nightmares. 

_ ("–tried to tell her, she won't even let me tell her I–" ) _

One in particular twists inside him from the night she dumped Percy, filtering his subconscious into a grayed-out haze that makes him queasy and agitated. No matter what he does, it clings to him like an oil slick, and he can't shake it off. He'll think he's getting there, will find agreement in something she says or grin back when she laughs at one of his jokes, but then they make eye contact–

_ ("I don't like this, Grace, I told you the first time not to make the same mistake I did, and if you ever even think about hurting him like that again I'll–") _

–and something in the pit of his stomach tries to rear up–

_ ("You have an awful lot of nerve lecturing me about hurting him, after what you–") _

–and in its place his brain shoves a vivid image of Percy on his knees and hyperventilating at junior prom, and everything is back where it started. That bile-choked fury, the total helplessness of it, Percy's fingers digging so hard into Jason's arm he left a circle of faint bruises as he dragged them both into the boy's bathroom, the way his legs had given out when Jason asked him what was wrong. 

_ "Annabeth–she–") _

"You weren't the one who had to sit there and listen while you tortured yourself for an _ hour _ because she _ made up out of thin air _that you cheated on her and had you convinced you could have somehow done so by accident!"

"Right on cue." Percy crosses his arms over his chest, glowering so hard Jason can feel it boring a hole right through him. His voice is steely, knuckles white with how hard he's clutching at his sleeve. "Her _boyfriend_ telling the girl he was playing romantic leads with that she looked great blonde, when blondes have _always_ _been my_ _goddamn type_, isn't exactly thin air." 

"Because complimenting your friend on her dye job _ once _ was an unforgivable offense that justified forbidding you from speaking to Rachel ever again, so telling her later that you liked her prom dress was basically the same thing as fucking her behind Annabeth's back, right?"

Percy's nostrils flare, and for a second Jason thinks he's about to be slugged–and, honestly, he'd probably deserve it, after that low a blow. His pride won't let him take it back. 

"She was _sixteen years old_, has _repeatedly_ apologized for both of those things, and I forgave her five _fucking _years ago, you ass." In an explosion of movement, he channels that impulse into pacing, footfalls as harsh and loud as the words spilling from his mouth. 

(Stunning, captivating, even curled in rage. As hot as it is, it also makes Jason sick, sympathetically choking on the bile he can hear in those snapped-out words.) 

"And that excuses her poisoning your entire friend group against you by spreading baseless accusations. I see. Silly me."

"An explanation is not a fucking excuse!" Percy stops, slams his hand against the wall and wheels around to glare at Jason where he's confined to the couch. "Reacting badly to strong emotions is what teenagers do! I wasn't exactly the paragon of poise and class either–does throwing my snare drum at the bleachers and being escorted off the field ring any fucking bells for you, by any chance?"

"You were responding to being _ slandered _by someone who was supposed to–"

"You know she has nightmares too, right? About you doing the _ exact same thing _ to me? Dumping me because you made up how I felt and didn't even give me a chance to correct you before you went around acting like I never existed? The only difference is that she didn't think she had the right to decide on _ my _ dealbreakers _ for me. _"

It kills any point Jason might have made, like mud on a campfire. The look on Percy's face back then had been haunting, twisted up in utter devastation; the bitter, clenched set of his shoulders now is almost as bad.

"That's not fair," Jason tells him, voice sounding hollow and far away. "You know I've accepted responsibility for that. There's a reason I was so on board with counseling." 

"'Accepted responsibility'." Percy makes finger quotes, and they've maybe never looked that unfunny, paired with the increasing volume of the words and rigidity of his jaw. "You're wallowing in performative self-flagellation and projecting your control issues onto her, is what you're doing, to the point where you won't even bother to _consider_ that we might have had conversations you weren't privy to. But fine, I'm the one who's being unfair." Percy scowls, a thunderhead in his glare. "For someone who complains so much about her jealous streak, you sure have a big fucking problem with me being friends with my ex."

It's one of those barbs that's intended to cut deep, the desperate lunge of a wounded animal. Jason, feeling his hair stand on end, opens his mouth to protest, but before he can, a shrill ringing cuts him off. 

"Time-out. Take a break before either of you fire any more potshots." 

Nico's leaning against the wall, egg timer in his hand. Jason's not sure when he even got there; hasn't been paying attention to anything but the bite in Percy's voice for what feels like days.

They're only allowed forty-five minutes of arguing at a time, by mutual agreement and the recommendation of their counselor Dr. Brunner, a kindly older man with a soft voice and limitless patience for whatever bullshit the two of them bring into any given session. After that, it's just destructive, with the two of them talking in circles and rehashing the same hurts over and over. 

It's not often that they get like this, but it's always about the same tangle of issues, and when it happens, it tends to get out of hand fast. The timer and a metamour to keep an eye on it are godsends, forcing them to stay in line by at least that much, cutting in to break up the fight before they can steamroll over every safety barrier they worked so hard to put in place.

The tautness releases all at once, leaving behind a mucky exhaustion. Percy looks as worn-out as Jason feels, but he's a lot more prone to showing his anger, and it burns in his fatigued stare. 

"I'm going to go work on my bike. Don't bother me. I'll come in when I want to." 

He doesn't say anything else as he storms out the front door into the night, slamming it behind him. The crushing silence he leaves behind is the most upsetting part of the entire reaction.

More than anything, Jason wants to purge himself through physical activity of every spiteful, angry feeling the evening's combat left behind–bench-press as much weight as he can hold, run until he can't stand up anymore, maybe even tear his shoulder on a punching bag for good measure–but his shitty habit of locking all of his muscles the instant he's faced with any sort of conflict means his knee is fucking killing him way too much to allow for movement, radiating all the way up his leg and into his hip and lower back, and so he's stuck here just sitting on the couch like a lump of–

"I'm saying this with as much affection as I can muster, but are you absolutely sure you aren't jealous?" 

Nico works his way into the living room, a wan smile at his lips. He's tense too, and Jason finds his stomach lurching in shame. Again. Fifth time in as many minutes. Something pricks at his eyes.

"Of course I'm jealous." He can admit at least that much, partly because it would be impossible _ not _ to be, at least a little–but mostly because if he tried to deny it anyway, Nico would know in an instant from extensive personal experience that he was full of shit. "It's that he doesn't seem to understand that being jealous isn't _ helping, _ but it isn't the problem either, and no matter how hard I try I can't seem to _ make _him understand. I'm running out of ideas." 

"You remember I was there too, right? Both times?" Sighing through his nose, Nico takes a seat on the floor. "Frankly, I wasn't thrilled with you _ or _Annabeth, but I managed to move past that. It's not an impossible ask."

(Percy just finished stripping and revarnishing the coffee table Nico's drumming his fingers on, replacing the crate that's now in the pantry storing several enormous bags of kibble. Jason shuts his eyes.) 

"Show me your secrets." He cracks one of them back open, feeling the lack of enthusiasm in the smirk he tries to levy. "Clearly, whatever I'm doing isn't working."

"I talked to both of you about it in people words, for one thing." Nico looks at him, his elegant features drawn with worry. "For another, I try not to make Percy do anything he doesn't want me to make him do. Tends to backfire, even with the most noble of intentions."

Jason, for once, can't bring himself to look back. Of all people, Nico would be the one to understand this part–had been the one holding Percy's hair as the intensity of his heartbreak had him emptying his stomach of everything he'd eaten that day, while Jason knelt beside him with an arm around his back and talked an endless stream of comforts in a desperate attempt to get one to stick.

A cold hand laces with his, and Jason tries again to meet Nico's eyes and this time, he succeeds. Earthy and infinitely deep. An inhale, an exhale, a tightening around slim fingers, and Jason's back to reality–sort of. 

(Every so often, he catches himself remembering the sound of agonized sobbing muffled in his shirt. Usually when Annabeth looks at Percy the way she always does, with fierce affection and a deep, wistful longing. Jason used to make that face too, back when Percy still thought he was straight and hadn't quite realized how cute he was when he smiled.) 

"I think the perspective would be good for both of you." Nico's squeezing back, firm and mooring, and it almost brings Jason's shoulders down. "You're the only two people who have been down this road with him. If you don't get it from each other, you won't get it from anyone." 

It wasn't pretty, the nine months and change they spent on the rocks. For Jason, it was moving through his daily routines and obligations like he was watching himself from outside his body, so numb he could barely process what was happening around him, but somehow faking enthusiasm well enough that nobody noticed he was falling apart. He'd stopped being able to sleep more than a few hours at a time and was having half a dozen panic attacks in a good week, but he was still excelling in athletics and by some miracle managed to keep his GPA from dropping any lower than a 3.75, and that was all his trainers, teachers and parents seemed to care about–although the lattermost only cared enough to be angry it went under 4.0. 

Food was hard to choke down more than once a day, but that was what protein powder was for. Lack of sleep didn't matter if he started his day by loading himself up with enough caffeine to kill a horse and finished it by flooding his headphones with aggressive, upbeat pop-punk (pointedly avoiding thinking about _ why _ he made that particular choice of which playlist to loop) to keep himself from dozing off on the bus. The constant physical pain became background static, an almost comforting white noise that kept him from focusing on the emotional. 

_ ('Cause I fear I might break / and I fear I can't take it / tonight I lie awake / feeling empty.) _

Exhausting, but he'd spent enough time perfecting his stoicism to keep his inner turmoil locked down until he was alone, free to sit on the floor with his head between his knees while he waited for the room to stop spinning long enough that he could shove it all away again and get started on his homework. Sure, his stomach ulcer had started flaring up again, especially when he was between toradol injections and had no choice but to choke down four ibuprofen if he wanted to be able to sleep at all, but it never got bad enough to put a crack in his iron facade. 

(At least, not until–he shudders, evades, like always.

_ I can feel the pressure. It's getting closer now.) _

For Percy, it had involved a lot more reckless self-endangerment: driving too fast, going home with strangers and neglecting to tell anyone where he was in case he didn't come back, periodically chain-smoking his way through an entire pack of cigarettes in one sitting, arguing himself into getting kicked out of school and fired from all three of his jobs before he was halfway through the spring semester, and drinking to incoherence exactly once, which gave him such a nasty hangover he'd ended up asking Annabeth to knock him out if he ever so much as _ considered _ turning it into a habit–

Right. Annabeth. He'd stayed with her and Reyna and Piper after, crashing on their couch as he bounced from gig to gig and never managed to last more than a few weeks at any of them. He couldn't afford his own place and hadn't trusted himself alone anyway, but he'd had nowhere else to go beside his mother's, and refused to put his family through watching him spiral. 

And, of course, he talked about it later like it was funny, laying out the timeline of events without a peep about how much he'd actually been suffering except to make self-deprecating jokes about codependency or rejection-sensitive dysphoria or if he was in a really sour mood, daddy issues and subconscious death wishes. Then he'd laugh and say _ I guess I put the 'hot' in 'hot mess', huh, _ and continue on after like he'd made an observation about cloud cover. 

The only thing Jason knows for certain about Percy's thought process back then is that he's fucking lucky it started with showing up on the girls' fire escape in the first place. Their support, especially from Annabeth, was the only reason he hadn't gotten himself killed from all the stupid risks he'd taken, or from–

"Does he actually know how badly _ you _were struggling, or did you justify making the executive decision that he couldn't handle hearing it by convincing yourself he had too many other things to worry about?" 

A moment of silence. Nico says it gently, but the words hit Jason in an old wound, harsh. 

"I'm in this picture and I don't like it," he mutters, shooting Nico a smile that he can tell looks like shit. Nico snorts and squeezes his hand again, and it's a desperately-needed anchor. 

"He's tougher than you're giving him credit for. He might be the toughest person I know, honestly." 

"It's not that I don't think he's tough enough to hear it." Because Nico has an excellent point; Percy had been through more trauma and abuse by twelve years old than anyone should in an entire lifetime, and yet he's still lively and passionate and deeply, unconditionally loving, still smiling, still ready and willing to open up and share a heart the size of the ocean. "It's that he already blames himself for my knee, and he shouldn't have to–"

"What, expect reciprocity for all the times he lets himself be vulnerable around you? Get tangible proof you trust him not to fall apart if you breathe on him funny?" Nico sits back on his heels, gaze pointed, but he keeps his hand tight around Jason's. "You should probably know by now that he reads that as infantilizing him, which _ really _ pisses him off. Almost as much as trashing his first love." 

"I'm not trying to trash her." And really, he isn't–the reaction feels totally involuntary, as much under his control as a startle or a sneeze. "Yeah, it bothers me that he puts her on a pedestal I'll never reach, but it's not the jealousy that really eats at me, it's..."

Hard to put in words. Easy to find them, but difficult to force them out, even here with no one to judge him but Nico and nothing to suggest he'd take the opportunity. It's the stare that does it–intense, but somehow still gentle. Just waiting patiently for Jason to continue. 

"I'd never seen anyone cry like that before," he says, after a moment of turning the words over in his head to distill them to their essential meaning. "Like I was watching someone rip his heart out of his chest while my hands were tied behind my back. I couldn't stop thinking about it–it kept me up at night for _ months _ afterwards. He was in so much pain over such a bullshit accusation, and no matter what I did or said to try to convince him it was bullshit, nothing got through to him. What I hate about it is that on some level, he _ still _thinks he's at fault." 

"I couldn't get it out of my head either," Nico replies, quiet. "But Percy has always blamed himself for absolutely everything, for as long as I've known him. Sally says he's been doing it since he was little. That's a him thing, not an Annabeth thing, and for the record, it keeps Annabeth up too. She doesn't like it any more than you do."

The reminder is like a smack in the mouth. It really isn't the differences that bother him so much–it's the similarities, the defensive perfectionism, the sick knowledge that he repeated the pattern he'd been trying so hard to break. Feverishly trying to avoid the source of all of that pain and throwing it in Percy's lap to deal with instead. At least in Annabeth's case, she had a decent reason for it in reeling from the hell Luke put them both through; Jason's only excuses are his own self-loathing and tendency towards emotional constipation.

"I guess I don't consider that as much as I should." 

"Correct. You don't." 

It isn't unkind. Nico is frighteningly intuitive–can read Jason like a book even when he's not up to his ears in adrenaline-fueled angst. Jason's heart seizes a little, and again, Nico sees it on his face and scoots a little closer to the couch.

"Look. Everyone fucks up. There is not a single person on the planet who hasn't. But people grow and mature, and you're missing out if you don't give them a chance to show you they know better now." He cocks an eyebrow, running his thumb over Jason's wrist bone. "Humans aren't built for that much pain, and a lot of us cope with those traumatic situations in really destructive ways. I know what that feels like, and so does Percy, and so do you, and so does she. I'm proof it can just as easily be a commonality as a point of contention between the two of you." 

"You're right, which is why this is so frustrating." Jason runs a hand over his face, blinking up at the ceiling. "I can't let go of a decade-old grudge because she reminds me of my lowest point, which–" 

"–forces you to acknowledge failure, something you avoid like the plague because you've been conditioned to think it's the worst thing you could possibly do, so you recoil by instinct before you have time to unpack it and it just continues to fester." Nico doesn't miss a beat, the corners of his mouth turning up in a faint smile. "I could have told you that five years ago." 

"You _ did _tell me that five years ago. I just didn't listen." Jason shuts his eyes and leans back against the arm of the couch, his neck protesting the change in position with a stab of pain that shoots into his shoulder. "It's all the head injuries. I can't make basic logical connections anymore." 

"No, you've always been like this." That smile warms into a smirk, teasing and affectionate. "You're annoyingly insightful about other people, but you're top-notch at convincing yourself you don't have feelings, even though you're actually just repressing them until your innards are made entirely of diamonds and you're so far removed you can't access them at all."

"Should I be offended?" 

"Jason, you dated Piper for a year and a half before you realized you were only doing it because your stepmother told you to." 

"Touche," Jason mutters, finally finding it in him to smirk back. "I guess I have a few things to think about." 

"Yes, but for right now you should disengage. Start another Ken Burns or something." Nico lets go of Jason's hand, but only to brush his hair away from his forehead, smiling–they're both a little morbid in how they decompress, Jason by powering through bleak socio-political documentaries and Nico by heckling sensationalist true crime; there's a mutual understanding there that reassures, and at the same time makes his face feel warm.

"Probably smart. If I keep trying to think through it while I'm this morose, I'll just end up digging myself deeper into self-pity." 

Nico ignores him feeling sorry for himself and pushes to his feet. "I'll check on Percy, and I'm going to tell him I think he should sleep upstairs with me tonight. Will won't mind staying down here in case you need something." 

It comes out of nowhere. 

One second, Jason's nodding along, ready to tell Nico _ yeah, that's a good idea, he probably won't sleep well with me, _ and the next, _ in case you need something, _ he's gasping for air, face wet, chest so tight it feels like he's being stabbed. The instant after that, Nico's sitting back down on the edge of the couch and pulling Jason into the tightest hug he's ever given him. 

"So–I feel so–I'm so _ fucking useless _!" 

"Hey. You're not useless." Nico's hands are cold as ice, but he proves the idiom true–has one of the warmest hearts Jason has ever known. "You're wounded. There's a big difference."

"Nico, I–" And, god, why does his voice sound so _ weird _ like this, all throaty and raw and– "he needed me to have his back, and I just _ left _ him there because I was too much of a coward to stand up to my own stepmother, and now here I am asking him to–to cater to my neurotics, when I can't even _ get out of bed _on my own, and I've never even made up for the fact that I almost–almost fucking drove him to–" 

"Jason Marcus Antonius Grace." 

Nico pulls back to look Jason in the eye (slightly blurred, and fuck, he must look terrible), hands still firmly holding onto him, grip unwavering. 

(He's one of three people still in Jason's life who knows his full name, and this is why–because he keeps it in strict confidence, to the point where he's never even spoken it aloud before now. It's enough to shock Jason into silence, as it was meant to. How his dark eyes can be that steely and still so warm is a mystery.) 

"I care very, very much about you, and it's _ because _ I care about you that if you continue on that line of thinking, I will take a page from my husband's book and duct-tape your mouth shut. You _ know _that's not true."

He lets it land. For a second, all Jason hears is his own ragged breathing. After another moment, Nico seems to decide the silence is an acceptable alternative to breaking out a muzzle, and he starts absently running his fingers through Jason's hair. 

"He was struggling anyway, and like I said before, you weren't doing so hot either. Your parents were making your life a living hell, the NCAA owned your soul, and your boyfriend had just gotten mugged by a couple of aggro shitheads who blamed his existence for ruining an image you were never trying to project in the first place. I'd have been at the end of my rope too." 

Because they couldn't and wouldn't try to take Jason himself in a fight, but Percy, smaller and thinner, appeared to be an easier target–fans, or people who thought themselves such, were rarely in Jason's real-life proximity, and didn't tend to have a concrete understanding of how big he actually was. Percy could and did handle himself, but the flash of ire–the familiar guilty stab along with it–feels like a jolt of cold electricity. 

_ ("Jesus Christ–babe, what the hell happened? You look like you got in a bar fight!" _

_ "That would be because I did. You should see the other guys." _

_ "Guys, plural. Fuck." _

_ "I don't know what I was expecting. I made the mistake of trying to get a burger at that place down by my parents–you know the one, it's where my mom and I watch your games. Or used to, I guess." _

_ "Percy. Tell me. Please." _

_ "Let's just say all three of us are banned from the premises now, and you should never underestimate my startle reflex, pain tolerance or lack of impulse control. In my defense, if they hadn't come at me from behind, I wouldn't have had to use my elbows." _

_ "...That's not funny. You could have gotten–" _

_ "I know, but if I don't joke about it I'll break something other than my rib and that one creep's nose.") _

"That's not–not all of it." It still sounds off, but at least Jason can string together a sentence now, instead of just hiccoughing out one desperate word at a time. "I thought I ruined his life by dragging him into the crossfire, and I hated myself for all that time I wasted falling into lockstep instead of being there for him, when I wasn't too busy hating myself for coming out at all."

"You were outed by your own fucking parents," Nico corrects, voice soft as the movement of his slim hands. "Do you really think people would have let up if you'd denied it? All you did was refuse to lie in the face of evidence being plastered to hell and back." 

Refuse to lie, which knocked over the final domino. Weeks of increasing hostility, cookware jokes at best if people even bothered to remember what Jason had actually come out as, building in cruelty as the season progressed and he got more airtime and public exposure. The only reason he hadn't been suspended from the Lions after all that bad press was that Coach Hedge had fearlessly, angrily gotten in the faces of everyone who'd tried, shouting them down until they gave up and backed off just to get him to stop yelling. 

Of course, it didn't fix the other problem–the flood of harassment that lead to Percy deactivating his twitter account, the vitriol it escalated to until Jason had to do the same; the sound of Percy screaming into Jason's coat from the frustration of one too many slurs thrown in their direction out of the window of a car, its bumper plastered in stickers from local shock jock radio shows, as it whizzed by. 

The only time Jason had seen him wearing bruises that he didn't want to press into, that couldn't have gotten him a soft, hungry inhale even if he'd tried.

"I refused to lie, and I put him in physical danger by doing so." 

It hurts to say. It would numb out, but hurt more in the long run, to swallow it down. 

"Do we really have to keep having this conversation?" Nico looks flatly down at Jason, his hand going still. "_ Juno _ put _ both _ of you in physical danger when she decided to use the worst parts of football culture to punish you for trying to exert your independence. You biffed the landing when you decided taking yourself out of the equation was the best way to keep Percy safe, but that doesn't mean you were wrong for trying, or that her manipulative bullshit was your fault."

"Does it matter, though? I broke my soulmate's heart and abandoned him to the wolves." The part he's been avoiding more than any other this whole time, ignoring it and the shame it carries along. Fuck. "I should have been stronger. Why I wasn't is irrelevant."

He shuts his eyes again, acutely aware that if they're this sore, they're probably so red and swollen he looks like he's going into anaphylactic shock. He can't muster the energy to care. He's always been a hideous crier, when he can manage tears at all.

"You _ came back _ from it, too." Nico's grip is firm, stare unwavering. "I have never met _ anyone _ who puts as much work into hard introspection as you do. If that isn't strength, I don't know what is. And now you have a house and a dog and a hot set of roommates you get to sleep with on a regular basis who don't let either of you get away with your nonsense." 

Weirdly, it's the most comforting thing Nico's said all night–or maybe that's just the groundedness he's sharing. A smile flickers at the corner of his cupid's-bow mouth, setting off a slight shudder down the back of Jason's neck.

Even knowing about the whole damn truckload of dirty laundry, he doesn't flinch away when Jason leans into his shoulder. Finally, the next breath feels like enough. 

"Thank you," Jason says, slightly muffled by black cotton. "For everything. I get what he means when he says he'd be fucked without you. _ We _would be fucked without you." 

"Non c'è di che." The breath it takes to speak stirs Jason's hair, warm. "I'm just letting you two mooch off my eleven years of therapy." 

"Either way, you have my enduring gratitude. " He shifts again, and feels it all the way down his back, wincing. "Maybe something a little more mindless than the Great War, if I don't want to give myself a stress migraine."

Nico sits back, blinks, and lets out a startled bark of laughter. 

"Not a bad idea. Why don't we do that baking show instead? I miss your frou-frou cupcakes."

"I miss making them. Might as well live vicariously." 

So Nico sets up the TV, keeping a light conversation going about the appropriate usage of each different kind of meringue. In the back of his head, Jason's still got an emotional lighting storm that he knows is only temporarily back-burnered, but with an arm around his shoulder and a lean body tucked behind him, he manages to keep it at bay. 

"Tomorrow's gonna suck," he mumbles between episodes, once he reaches that slightly-delirious stage of exhaustion three episodes in. It's nearly two in the morning. Nico, typically not wandering to bed until three or four, remains calm and collected. This is why Percy raves so much about his petting, though, and for once the lurking angst seems like it might be something Jason can handle. 

"Yup. But you're–" 

"_Wuff!" _

Before Nico can finish his thought, Mrs. O'Leary trots down the stairs and into the living room. Whatever woke her up is a mystery, given the volume of their argument and how responsive she is to Percy's upset, but whatever it was, she's just as alert as she is at six in the morning when Will takes her on her morning walk. 

"Well, hello, there." Nico glances down at Jason, then back up at her. She answers him by plopping down next to the couch with a thud. 

Then, gently, she reaches over and rests one massive paw on Jason's stomach. She huffs again, quietly, and all of a sudden he gets it. Percy's right–she _ can _talk, just not in words. 

(Frankly, there's very little Percy _ isn't _ right about, in the end.) 

"She has a point. You're awfully hard on yourself." Nico's doing his best to hide his amusement, but he's not doing a great job of it, and it's somewhat infectious. She huffs as if to agree.

There's a little bit of a pricking at Jason's eyes–after that time he dove on top of her and wrecked his knee, she's been just a hair less effusive with him, but she's apparently forgiven his transgression. Just like her dad and his sweet smile. Fuck. 

"I appreciate the reassurance, " he tells her once he regains control of her voice, and she huffs again and sits up and touches her cold, wet nose against his cheek. 

Okay, maybe Jason's crying a little when she gets up and heads over to the front door, woofing expectantly, but Nico still isn't judging him as he follows to let her out into the night. 

For a moment, he just stands and watches, and when he turns around he looks just as soft as he had when he was holding on through the whirlwind of Jason's pathos. 

"She beelined for the carriage house," he explains, smiling as he heads back towards the couch. "'One of my humans down, one to go.'"

Jason sits up to let him back in, and after a hand pushes gently on his stomach–just where the dog had–he lies back down into Nico's lap. 

"If anyone can get through to him, it'll be her." He looks up and that smile's still there, sharp against his bony features and more comforting than a mug of coffee on a frigid morning. 

"He's in good paws." Nico leans forward, and for a second Jason thinks he's about to be kissed and his everything clenches up with something he can't identify, but before it can set in properly he feels a forehead against his own. "And so are you." 

"If you had paws, I feel like I would have noticed," he quips, and the fleeting moment of panic is worth it for the peals of laughter it sends Nico into. 

"No, I'm just very good at hiding my werewolf transformations." 

"You should have told me. We could have been running together in the moonlight this whole time."

(There's something about Nico and moonlight. Silvery glowing bars against the angles of his cheekbones, casting shadows that most of his acquaintances inexplicably read as unsettling. In Percy's opinion, he looks like a modern, elegant incubus, and honestly, Jason gets where he's coming from.) 

At some point, Nico elects to be the one to stay downstairs and fires off a text to Percy to update him on the situation–he won't be watching his phone, too busy directing every ounce of attention he has onto Mrs. O'Leary. By the time Jason's calmed down enough for sleep, it's after three-thirty and his head is swimming. 

That's got to be why, as the blanket comes up around him, he thinks he feels lips against the back of his neck. There's no other logical explanation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **content warnings:** MOOD WHIPLASH AHOY, CAP'N. Backstory references include self-harm/risk-seeking, parental abuse, brief alcohol abuse, disordered eating, queerphobic violence and alluded-to suicidal ideation/attempt.
> 
> <s>This was supposed to be cute petplay fluff shjhdfljkahndsaf</s>
> 
> Next up is actually the petplay I kept threatening to do. Hopefully. Unless my shoulder devil starts hissing in my ear again and I end up with a 50,000 word chapter about the history of western civilization or something. HOWEVER IT IS IN MY OUTLINE AND FOLLOWS THE ARC so chances are....slightly better? Knock on wood. 
> 
> I'm going to go look at pictures of mastiff/rottie puppies now.
> 
> **ETA September 1st 2020:** apparently I had turned off guest comments, which I have no recollection of doing. That's fixed now along with the spacing. ^^; Apologies for any inconvenience!
> 
> Be kind to yourself and others, and I will see you next time. Which, yes, I can now confirm actually will be pet play.


	9. Pet Play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scar tissue is always more stubborn, and it always leaves stiffness and pain behind. The longer it sits, the worse it gets, and the harder it is to heal up at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooooooly shit. I don't have any excuses. Same content warnings as last time, plus emetophobia/puking; skip to the second scene change with the centered dash if all you want is the smut! ^^;; 
> 
> There is, however, the promised dog focus and positive takeaway. I swear I never meant it to end up like this ;_; 
> 
> Thank you all so much for your patience. 
> 
> *note: <s>there will be alt text for emoji shortly, I just need to. Get to a computer so I'm not trying to code on my phone</s> I'm having trouble figuring this out, but that's fine. The string of emoji in question will be captioned in the end notes, until I fix it. Page breaks done, though!

_ "The world's in trouble, there's no communication–" _

"Judgmental, hypocritical piece of–" 

The wrench isn't behaving, or maybe it's Percy's fingers shaking. For a second, a bitter, immature part of him thinks it would serve Jason right if he cut himself on a gear and got tetanus and had to amputate his hand, but as soon as it surfaces it's gone, swallowed up by shame. It wouldn't be fair to Will anyway–he's already spent too much time patching Percy up after one of his stupid ideas backfires on him. He gives up instead, tossing the wrench onto the floor with too much force. 

"Fuck you," he mutters. To himself or the tools or Jason or all of the above–he's not quite sure. It doesn't really matter. He let his temper get the best of him, again, and now he gets to stew in his own self-made misery. 

_ "–can say what they wanna say, it never gets better anyway–" _

Dicking around with Blackjack was supposed to help. It was an early birthday present–remembering how much Percy had liked working on his mom's car from the time he was big enough to lift the tools, Nico specifically picked out a used hog that needed a lot of work so that he could fix it up himself. Usually it's meditative, but when he's this pissed off, his ability to tolerate frustration is so badly shot that the slightest error knocks him on his ass. Thinking of Nico, the sense-memory of chilly hands running over his skin, helps for a few fleeting seconds, then it's gone like vapor.

When he was small, his meltdowns had involved a lot of screaming and flailing his limbs, mostly out of a lack of ability to communicate his overwhelming distress in any other way. His mom would always take the first opportunity to scoop him up and bring him somewhere quiet and never, ever made him feel bad about it–not once, not even when his antics got them kicked out of grocery stores or shushed by nosy strangers on the bus. 

She always understood what he was upset about, even when he didn't, reassuring him that it was hard being little, that it was okay to be frustrated, that sometimes you had no choice but to scream and flail it out for a while. Once he'd exhausted himself, she'd pick him up and carry him and he'd fall asleep on her shoulder, gently rocked by her steps and surrounded by the vanilla-sugar smell of her soft hair. 

Recently, it's been hitting Percy hard how _ young _ she was back then–if he'd had a kid at the same age, they'd be starting kindergarten in the fall. He can barely take care of himself; how she managed to take care of both of them, on top of working two jobs to keep them afloat and dealing with all of the trouble Percy had gotten into on any given day, he has no idea. The weight of it seems unimaginably crushing. 

His whole body still feels that same intense, vibrating rage, but he's not a kid anymore and doesn't have an excuse to throw that kind of tantrum. It ends up burning him from the inside out instead, building up until it boils over into lashing out with cutting, petty insults. 

"He kind of deserved it, though," he mumbles to the air. "If he would just get over himself and be a grownup, this wouldn't keep happening."

Fuck, he suddenly wants nothing in the world more than a cigarette or nine or twenty. The mentholated burn in his throat, the murky awareness that he'd probably half-destroyed what little talent he had left by scarring away his vocal range and ruining his lung capacity–the handy excuse to be self-destructive without actually having to commit to doing anything irreversibly stupid.

Any grounding he got from it would be temporary and swiftly outshadowed by the humiliation of falling off the wagon. Begging one off Clarisse that one time felt shitty enough, and he's so close to a full two years since then he can practically feel it in his hands. Half of how he talked her into quitting, a year to the day after his last, was by promising to buy her lunch for every combined milestone they hit together; she'd never let him hear the end of it if he gave up and let her win. 

Besides, the stench gives Jason terrific headaches, and as angry as Percy is, no relief would be worth two days of guiltily watching his boyfriend suffer through the sensation he'd described as an ice pick driving through his skull. 

_ ("...This is my fault, isn't it." _

_ "Hey, don't–" _

_ "No, it is. You never had them this bad until I started trying to give myself cancer." _

_ "Could you bring me some mouthwash?" _

_ "That doesn't answer my question." _

_ "Thank you." _

_ "You're welcome. Now talk." _

_ "...Alright, fine. Tobacco smoke is one of many triggers, including undersleeping, blue light, shifts in atmospheric pressure and strong smells of any kind. It's not just the–hhah–" _

_ "Good lord." _

_ "I know. Sorry. You don't–nhhh–" _

_ "The fact that you're trying to apologize to me mid-vomit is either sweet or terrifying." _

_ "'m okay. It's mostly the snow." _

_ "You're a lying liar who lies. It started when I came back in this morning." _

_ "It's just as likely I already had one in the wings making me way more sensitive to–" _

_ "Will you stop making excuses for me?" _

_ "I'm not, I'm making up for all of the other times I should have come to your defense.") _

A low bark startles Percy out of his rumination, and he jerks his head up to find Mrs. O'Leary staring back at him. He must have left the door open in his haste to plug in his phone, crank Joan Jett from the bluetooth speakers he keeps by his toolbench and tinker out his feelings. Not that it worked anyway. 

"You okay?" 

Percy frowns. It's worrying that she's awake–there aren't that many possibilities as to why she'd be up and about at this time of night, and most of them aren't good–but then she plods over and lays down, her side pressed up against his back. A second later, he feels the fluttering of tiny paws, and with it a wave of relief. Not dying, just heavily pregnant, with all of the discomfort that implies. He reaches over and scratches her ear as she settles in behind him.

"Estelle used to wake Mom up with her kicking, too. Babies always seem to want to move around in the middle of the night, for some reason." 

She's bigger than Blackjack. He hadn't actually noticed until now, when she's lounging parallel to it. Leaning back against her is sort of like cuddling with a bear, surrounded on all sides with heat and fluffy fur. 

She huffs again, nudging her head under his arm until he reaches back and loops it around her neck. He manages to smile when he buries his face in her shoulder. 

"Yeah, I know, I'm a mess." Muffled in her coat, he can barely hear himself, but he feels the rumbling of her woofing back at him. She can bark loudly enough to make your ears ring, but she seems to sense Percy's agitation and meter her usually-booming voice accordingly.

It's funny how serendipity brought them a pet who could so well respond to all of their cumulative issues–fetching meds, alerting to panic attacks, settling herself near her panicked human for emotional support and grounding and, if necessary, giving the best deep-pressure therapy the world's ever seen. She's even big and sturdy enough to brace Jason when his leg gets shaky, which is a feat all on its own. 

Maybe tomorrow they'll take a walk downtown and visit that pet shop by the lighthouse. The little old lady who owns it is a lot like Percy's mom, always finding an excuse to load them up with 'free samples' in exchange for torrential dog kisses and some of whatever batch of people treats Jason had made recently. Not that Jason has been able to stand up long enough to bake in almost a month. 

One of the weirdest parts of this whole re-busted knee business is the sudden absence of tantalizing aromas wafting through the house. Jason keeps trying to limp into the kitchen and cook anyway, but by the time he's gotten the first dish set out, he's had it hammered in why he isn't up to it, and he ends up limping back out again with a frustrated despondency so thoroughly surrounding him Percy can see it weighing down his shoulders.

Gently, Mrs. O'Leary noses his ear, cold and damp. _ You're hamster-wheeling again. _

"I guess this is what you're trained for, huh? I wouldn't be able to hide it from you even if I were fooling everyone else around me. You learned all the signs before you even met me." 

She barks in what sounds like affirmation. He snorts into her fur and sits up, looking directly into her eyes. (They're too red; once she's recovered from the birth, she's going into surgery to fix her drooping lids so they don't get so dry and irritated.)

"You can't really judge, since you cope with stress by hoarding my dirty laundry." 

She stares at him, silent and way too knowing, until he flops back against her in defeat.

"Don't give me that look. I'm not saying I didn't lose my cool, I'm just saying it takes two to have a knock-down drag-out fight." 

"_Ruff_." 

"What? Even _ he _admits he's being wildly unfair. He graduated college almost three years ago, and he's still stuck on fucking high school." 

Somehow, maybe because she's guaranteed not to spill any of his secrets, it's easier for him to admit defeat to her. Her warmth surrounds him like a shag blanket. 

"You're right. I'm being unfair too." 

Fuck. It's not even like Jason's refusing to speak to Annabeth or being a jackass about it–he's just struggling, the same way she is, to divest himself of their history. His protective, devoted nature is one of the best things about him–

_ ("–not your fault she's seeing things that aren't there, when anyone who's ever been within a hundred miles of you can tell how lucky they'd be if you–") _

"–and here I am, complaining about him getting defensive on my behalf like I haven't done the exact same thing on steroids." Belatedly, Percy registers that he was verbalizing that train of thought. Damn it. "Never could keep my stupid trap shut, huh?" 

Mrs. O'Leary whines and licks a gentle stripe of slobber over his cheek. _ Don't call yourself stupid. _

"It's true," he mumbles back, but he can't actually look her in the eye this time. "I blow my lid at the slightest provocation. My brain-to-mouth filter is nonexistent. I pushed his buttons because I was pissed off and I wanted him to know it, and now I'm sitting in a garage with my dog at three in the morning feeling sorry for myself while he deals with the mess I left."

It seems she can't argue, or maybe she just isn't dignifying him with a response. She starts grooming him instead, moving her enormous tongue from his cheek to his hair. The drool is pretty gross, but the attention is comforting enough to outweigh it–a shower probably isn't a bad idea anyway, once he drags himself back inside through the mud of his self-hatred. 

As soon as he thinks it, he feels ridiculous and overdramatic, almost to the point where it's funny. 

"What the fuck is _ wrong _with me?" 

He means it as a joke, but–

_ ("–the fuck is wrong with me? Why won't anyone–all I wanted was for someone to–why won't anyone love me?" _

_ "...oh, seaweed brain, don't say that–" _

_ "Then why can't I–") _

_ – _for an abrupt second, he's twenty and shitfaced and lying on the floor of Annabeth's kitchen, sobbing pathetically into her lap as his fucked-up brain chemistry and the electric iced teas he'd lost count of did their combined best to run him off the road.

And that, as always, leads him to the memory of sitting in the rec room at the psych ward, watching in slow-motion horror as Jason froze just before a tackle and took the full force of the other player side-on, his leg bending in a way nobody's ever should; he'd hit the turf like a felled tree, screaming so loudly he could be heard without a microphone over the ancient, clunky TV–

(_"Please, I swear I'll follow the rules to the letter, you can send me with a chaperone, I'll stay away from everything that isn't baby-proofed, you can tie my freaking hands behind my back if you want–") _

–of begging fruitlessly to be allowed to visit Jason's hospital room, of practically sprinting to the stairwell the second his discharge papers went through a few days later because the elevator was too fucking slow and he was only three floors away, of how scared and sad and _ small _ Jason had looked as he lay there with an IV in his arm and eyes so wide it seemed like he thought Percy had actually–

_ ("...when I told you to break a leg all those times, I didn't mean it literally!" _

_ "...You–" _

_ "Oh, fuck, dude, don't–don't cry over me, I'm not worth–" _

_ "I am on a lot of heavy pain medication and almost no sleep and I will cry over you if I damn well–") _

–and before he knows it, Percy's eyes are stinging as the guilt crawls up his throat, leaving a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth. 

It was the second time, in the entire six years they'd known each other back then, that Percy had ever seen him in tears, and the first time had been his fault, too. Half past midnight on the third day after getting the shit kicked out of him, he'd woken up to stabbing pain in his side and the sound of quiet gasping from behind the not-quite-closed bathroom door. By the time he got Jason to talk, the decision had already been made.

_ ("You're miserable with me. Pretending you aren't isn't doing you any favors. You need to pull back and focus on yourself for a while, at least until this blows over–" _

_ "I'm focusing on myself just fine, thank you very fucking much, and I would appreciate it if you'd stop telling me how I feel and what I need without asking for my–" _

_ "What happens when you piss off the wrong person? Someone with more friends? What if they follow you somewhere secluded instead of hauling off in front of thirty witnesses? There will be a next time, and it really fucking worries me that you aren't taking it seriously." _

_ "Just because I'm not gnashing my teeth and wailing about how much it sucks doesn't mean I'm not fucking taking it seriously!" _

_ "Percy, you're not understanding how bad this has gotten." _

_ "Who fucking died and gave you the right to tell me what I don't understand? I'm the one with the broken rib, genius, I understand every time I fucking breathe!" _

_ "And yet you insist, as recently as this morning, on antagonizing the trolls by working them into a froth and daring them to come after you every time one of them so much as thinks about insulting me, without a shred of evidence to suggest you're making an accurate risk assessment and not just jumping in front of every bullet you think is directed my way." _

_ "...Oh. I see. This is my fault for provoking them. Sorry; I was under the impression it was my job as your boyfriend to stick up for you when you're being eviscerated, but I guess I'm just asking to get beaten up." _

_ "That's not even REMOTELY what I–" _

_ "No. You know what? Fuck you, and fuck the high horse you rode in on, too.") _

That whole mess is the worst thing Jason's ever been through, if he's to be believed, counting both the sequence of events that led up to him being removed from his mother's custody and the authoritarian nightmare he'd been dumped into after. It still keeps him awake at night, haunts his recollections of college, makes him drop so hard it puts Percy's endorphin crashes to shame whenever he feels like he's getting more credit than he deserves. It's been a little better recently, but chances are good that after tonight, they're back where they started, if not worse. 

There's no excuse for throwing it in his face, no matter how unfair he's being, and there's even less of one considering Percy knows–_ should _ have known better by now. Has heard a thousand times that feeling so powerless had been destroying Jason from the inside out, that he'd thought it was the only way to keep Percy from ending up in a dumpster somewhere, that his parents' bullshit had so thoroughly gotten its hooks into him that it had barely taken a whisper of a suggestion to convince him it would have been selfish and cruel to try to hang onto a relationship he firmly believed he'd never deserved at all. 

That he regrets nothing he's ever done or said more than that night on the bathroom floor, staring defeatedly as Percy blew up at him–

_ ("You're a fucking coward, you know that?" _

_ "I'm trying to look out for your safety!" _

_ "As though I can't look out for myself? Just because I like sucking your dick doesn't mean I'm a delicate flower you get to send away to the countryside while you go off to the trenches without me!") _

–and stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him so hard it shook the frame. Just like tonight. 

Bristling with spite, even though it made Jason flinch like he'd been smacked, Percy dragged it into an unrelated argument anyway, and salted the wound to make sure it hurt. Just like he always does, every time he loses his grip on all those years of anger management. 

_ ("–needed her in my corner because you left me there by myself.") _

Hot with shame, he buries his face in Mrs. O'Leary's shoulder and tries to let himself be consoled. Whether it works is debatable, but at very least, it keeps him from completely devolving. 

He'll have to go inside eventually, but she's been working hard growing her litter and keeping him on earth at the same time, and the least he can do is give her a massage to say thanks. He wiggles around to dig into her shoulders, and pretends it doesn't make him think about trying to work out the knot Jason's had in his throwing arm since high school.

Scar tissue is always more stubborn, and it always leaves stiffness and pain behind. The longer it sits, the worse it gets, and the harder it is to heal up at all. 

As if she can read his mind, Mrs. O'Leary gets to her feet, nudging him until he follows.

"Okay. You win. I'll call a truce."

She patiently lets him leverage himself with a hand on her neck, and waits by the door while gathers up his shit. The wrench, slightly scratched, goes back in the toolbench; the grease rag, once he's wiped off the last few traces of grunge from his hands, sits on top. He unplugs the charger he keeps out here so he doesn't lose it and grabs his phone–

** _Daddy~_ ** **🌈💕🔪**🥰😘💋🍆

>_ your primary had a massive panic attack_

_>stay upstairs in our room if you cant say anything nice_

>_ its not that I dont get it, you have a right to be angry at him, but he didn't deserve that kind of shit-flinging. _

_ >you owe each other an apology and you should call brunner in the morning. _

_ >love you xo _

"God fucking _ damn it._" 

Percy sinks to the floor, shuddering. The texts are from almost three hours ago. He hadn't even heard the chime. 

Nico is a lot like he is–so freaked out by the strength of his own feelings that he struggles to verbalize them out loud, even in English where the meaning is a little looser. He always signs his texts the same way, as if to atone for it. Usually it makes Percy's heart pick up, but just now it makes him sick.

There's a buzzing in his ears and a twisting in his stomach and for a second, he thinks he's going to hurl, but before it can really get going Mrs. O'Leary is sitting in front of him and putting her enormous paws on his shoulders and leaning forward until she hits that sweet spot–right where it's enough to act like a weighted blanket without making him feel trapped. Counterintuitively, breathing is a lot easier when he can feel her mass pressed up against him. 

It takes a full twenty minutes, according to his phone, before he feels like he can stand up without blacking out, and even then it's only because of Mrs. O'Leary leaning heavily against his side and keeping him steady.

He pretends again that there's no lump in his throat as he walks across their patchy lawn towards the porch. Overgrown into a meadow when they moved in, it's in way better shape after Juniper pastured her goats there for a few days. Grover's been teaching Estelle how to spin and dye the wool for her knitting projects, and her very first–a lumpy, navy-blue monstrosity of a scarf–is Percy's favorite thing that he owns, solely because of the pride on her face when she presented him with it. She's halfway through another one for Nico in blood-red, because she pays very, very close attention to his fashion choices and is pretty convinced he's a vampire anyway.

Honestly, from the way he bites and dresses and reacts to direct sunlight and _ especially _ from that startling wisdom, as though he's got a century of life experience to draw on, Percy's not sure she's wrong. It'd certainly explain why he's so rich, if he's been collecting income that whole time. 

The internal humor doesn't last beyond the front door. Jason's glasses are on the coffee table next to a mound of tissues, and upon picking them up and looking, the lenses are stained with salt. 

"_Fuck_." 

So much for sleep. So much for any semblance of keeping it together. Percy drops onto the couch, and his dog is right there with him, and he can't move to do anything beyond flinging his arms around her neck and muffling a helpless noise in her fur. 

By the time he pulls himself together, it's five in the morning and Mrs. O'Leary has fallen asleep alongside him, snoring thunderously. It takes some doing to untangle himself, and he has to spit out a few dog hairs after, but he manages not to wake her up.

He's dizzy with exhaustion and the pile of crumpled tissues on the coffee table has doubled in size. He should go and bunk with Will like Nico suggested, give Jason the morning to recover, but ascending the stairs feels about as plausible as teleportation. 

Despite telling himself it's a bad idea with every step, he keeps putting one foot in front of the other like he's in a trance, until he's gently pushing open his bedroom door and seizing up at the sight of Jason sprawled on his stomach with Nico's arm slung tight around his back. 

They're both out, thank god, because the fucking door has an awful habit of creaking that sounds like nails on a chalkboard in the otherwise-silent space. The floorboards creak too, but he makes it all the way in without either one of them twitching. 

He wants to crawl into bed and bury his face in Jason's shoulder, let him be the oreo filling for once–but he's too wobbly to shower like he planned and he's not about to add slobber to injury, so it wasn't an option to begin with. 

What he _ really _wants is resolution, which means punishment, the real kind; when he fucks up enough to get all twisted inside like this, it's the only thing that actually works to interrupt the shame spiral, by putting a concrete set of consequences for his actions into a time-limited session that he can move past once it's over. 

Trouble is, as good as Jason is at playing the sadistic disciplinarian, it's something he has to be in a _ very _ specific frame of mind for if he wants to avoid falling into his own minefield. Percy has nobody to thank but himself for throwing that choice out the window, too, which only makes the need for it stronger.

The next best option–the _ only _option–is to set up camp on his knees by Jason's side of the bed and wait. He sucks at it, and he's probably going to be twitchy and climbing the walls by the time Jason rouses if he manages to stay there at all, but that's why it's so important. 

_ All I want from you is to give it your best shot. At the end of the day, that’s the only thing that actually matters. _

He can't undo the fight, but he can prove he regrets it with the marks on his knees from the hardwood, and that will have to be enough. 

—

As he predicted, Percy fails miserably to stay put. 

In his defense, four hours is a long time to sit still even for a neurotypical person on a good day, but his shoulder devil is trying hard to convince him he doesn't deserve to be defended and logic doesn't do much to shut it up. It's a little easier to _ ignore _ it when he's already decided he wasn't trying to succeed, and his kneecaps are indeed starting to bruise, so he's still achieved his goal–but he's pretty sure he's never actually going to reach a point where it goes away. 

Will had poked his head in a little after six, Mrs. O'Leary's leash in his hand, and hadn't even blinked at what he found; he'd just carefully brought her over for another kiss and his own reassuring hair-ruffle. Both of them unflappable and affectionate. 

That had helped at first, but the effects of her nobly-intended attempts to give her sad person a bath hit saturation shortly after, and Percy'd had to give up for a few minutes and jump in the shower and ward off the clawing anxiety that Jason might wake up and he wouldn't be there by telling himself it was better to be clean and presentable anyway. He'd managed to avoid that scenario, but his stupid brain just latched onto the fact that it was his fault Jason slept through his alarm a little later.

Nico hadn't–he'd turned it off with a grumble and caught Percy, hair still wet because it's never once in his life taken less than a full workday to dry, out of the corner of his eye, stilling to marble for a brief moment. The look on his face had been pointed, but almost longing, like he wanted to be holding Percy as he called him out: a technique he's almost perfected for softening the blow without sugarcoating it. 

After a minute–he'd still been half asleep, even staring directly into Percy's soul–he'd waved in a lazy _ come-here _ that might as well have been magically binding. He hadn't said anything, but he'd taken Percy's hand and squeezed it hard and run his mouth over the back of it, and smiled as Percy moved as quickly and quietly as he could back to the floor.

He was asleep again before Percy even had a chance to settle, and he'd stayed that way until maybe half an hour ago. Balming, too, was the way he'd smirked as his eyes registered Percy's state of post-shower undress.

Nerd that he is, his proper good-morning at quarter past nine was in the form of shaping his hands into a heart, which made Percy snort with laughter and tense up for a second as he waited for Jason to jerk awake–but nothing happened aside from that gut-punch of remorse, because he wore the guy out again, in the worst possible way this time.

The silent presence as Nico takes the opportunity to knock out some of his assigned reading is mooring, the same way Mrs. O'Leary's presence is, and it's a damn good thing too, since she'd apparently conked out as soon as she got back from her morning walk. Waking her after she stayed up with Percy all night seems cruel, even if he desperately needs the life preserver. 

Tomorrow, he's taking her to the pet shop and combing the beach for the neatest shell he can possibly find, another trinket for Nico's display of his magpie gifts. (Probably followed up with a blowjob–Percy knows himself well enough to admit it.)

He tries not to think about how much worse it would be if it were just him and Jason. Possibly unfixable on his part, though not for lack of effort, and that was true even before he realized Nico was a little taller than he was and that knowledge shifted his paradigm completely.

Finally, after what feels like a millennium, Jason makes a ragged noise. Percy freezes in place, every muscle he has tensing up as Jason glances over and freezes right there with him. 

"I'll make coffee." 

Nico untangles himself from the covers, and the look Jason gives him as he goes twists in Percy's chest, hard. The cold hand brushing over the back of his neck helps. 

For a long minute, neither of them says anything. Then–

"I'm sorry–" 

"–_ I'm _sorry, I was such a–" 

"–totally unacceptable to–"

"–shouldn't have gotten so–" 

"–but it's _ my fault _that we–" 

"–okay, talking over each other isn't helping." 

Jason falls silent, biting at his lip. He looks like he wants to cry, but he's probably not going to be able to for at least a month after this. 

"Can I come up?" Percy adds, his voice coming out weak and quiet. Jason reaches for him, exhaling in a shudder. 

"If you don't, I think I'm going to lose what little grip I have left." 

However he got up here, Percy doesn't remember it. One second he's on the ground, the next he's muffling a sob in Jason's shoulder and trying not to recoil away from the arms that wind around him. 

"I was a raging asshole," he mutters thickly. Jason tightens his grip, knowing from the fifty thousand times they've had this conversation that it's not that the touch is unwanted, it's that it feels unearned. 

"Yeah, but you were also _ right_." 

"That doesn't give me an excuse to pistol-whip you and knee you in the balls when you're down, though." 

"Okay, fair," Jason concedes, smiling weakly in a way that burrows into Percy's chest and makes his heart seize again. "You were kind of a dick, but so was I, and it still doesn't mean you're _ wrong_. If you're bringing something up, there's a good reason, and I should have listened to you from the beginning." 

"How dare you be heavily biased in my favor?" 

Dry, except for the sniffle. Jason chokes out a brief fit of laughter. 

"How dare you be protective of the woman who took you in and kept you alive when I kicked you out?" 

"Does it count as kicking me out if I vacated the place of my own volition?" 

"Does it count as your own volition if it's because I broke up with you and made the only other choice intolerable?" 

Pointed. Percy sighs, raspy. 

"Can we save this for our next appointment? We can agree we were both assholes with valid points, and right now I just–" 

"Me too," Jason agrees, as though Percy didn't cut himself off. "I think we both need it. You still owe me, you know. Seems like the right time to cash in."

Which only ever means one thing, because Jason only ever _ wants _one thing: a chance to spoil him rotten. But he's still got that spooky ability to read Percy's mind, and there's a slight edge of mischief under all that desperate longing. 

"Will you–" Percy cuts himself off a second time, chews on his lip, tries again– "Later, I need you to–" 

"Go to sleep. You're bushed." Yep, definitely mischief, proven by the way Jason's smile goes lopsided. "But don't worry. I have an idea." 

—

"_Fuck." _

"Request or expletive?" 

"Yes!" 

"Like I told you the last thirty times, you're going to have to earn it."

Percy shudders, hard, and buries his face in Jason's stomach, shifting restlessly at the low rumbling of that laugh against his ear. His dick pulses, and his thighs are wet, and the plug's been vibrating for a solid ten minutes and he's _ absolutely losing his mind– _

_ Just because I'm feeling a burning psychological need to pamper you doesn't mean I can't make you suffer while I'm doing it, _ Jason had said, nearly ominous, as he fixed the cock cage in place. And he's a fucking evil genius, because it's _ perfect– _doesn't require any real sadism on his part, other than the obvious, and pulls double-duty by giving him something pretty to look at in the desperate writhing. 

Percy whines, and Jason makes an approving sound from above him, holding him secure in his lap. Bare but for the cage and the blue collar, lying there as obediently as possible, which isn't very. Jason kissed his knees after getting him sort-of-dressed, feather-light contact against the collection of green and blue marks there.

"That's my good boy. Look how sweet you are for me." Hand firm, dick hard against Percy's shoulder, voice so quiet the noise of the TV almost drowns it out and so warm and loving it turns him to jelly. 

"I'm certainly trying." 

"You know that's all I'm ever going to ask for." 

The moment of sincerity distracts Percy from his cock and makes his breath catch in his throat. He can't look up, but Jason doesn't try to make him, and that's the clearest sign of remorse the guy could possibly give. 

"Are you sure that's safe? It's been almost six hours." 

Percy jerks his head up at the same time that Jason startles, finding Nico squinting suspiciously at them from the doorway with a pomegranate in one hand and a copy of Grey's Anatomy in the other. 

"Yup. I checked. Some people wear them for weeks at a time. Percy's tough; he'll be fine for a while longer." 

"If you make me wait a week, I might kill you in your sleep." 

"Careful, or I'll take that as a challenge."

It's hard to tell if Jason's serious, and Percy's not sure if it makes him queasy or turns him on. Nico makes a strangled noise, grimacing down at them. (Also turned on, interestingly.) 

"Is there a reason you're punishing _ me, _too?" 

"He does have a thing for making me come," Percy points out, breathless, and the way Nico grins and Jason snorts with amusement leave him feeling as pinned as if they were both on top of him. Fuck. "Damn it, now I'm thinking about tag teams again." 

It seems Nico has decided on participation, slipping into his persona like a silk robe after an instant of fond indulgence. "That's a good idea. I wonder how long it would take your brain to explode if we started giving you conflicting instructions." 

"Come back in an hour or two," Jason counters, gripping Percy's hair. "We're not quite done here yet." 

Nico feigns irritation as he heads back up to his study, but the front of his pants gives him away. 

Jason yanks his attention back with a sharp tug of his hair and an increase in the vibrator's speed. Percy collapses like he's supposed to and lets every ounce of feeling in him pour out in a loud, choked, helpless noise. 

"Look at me." 

"I love you." 

Jason freezes, staring down at Percy with a thousand emotions on his face. Then he pulls Percy up and into his lap proper, legs on either side of his waist, pressed agonizingly close against his torso, head against his shoulder.

"I get what you mean when you say words don't really cover it. At least in English." 

Percy figures out where he's going with it almost immediately, but he still tenses in nervous anticipation at the mouth brushing his ear. 

"Ti amo." 

"Fucking dork." 

It's a sob, though, and what it means is _ me too, fuck, why don't we have this in English, _and Jason has never needed to be told. He's fluent in Percy's I-love-yous by now, recognizes the meaning behind making him coffee or washing his hair or kneeling by his bedside for four hours, waiting to apologize. 

"Fucking brat." 

Percy dissolves into hiccuping laughter, his hips moving in involuntary circles, basking in the surge of relief. They're giving each other shit, which means they're back on track. 

Maybe he cries a little, but Jason's given him plausible deniability and wouldn't be bothered anyway. The frustration is astonishingly cathartic. He can even handle it, kind of, when Jason pulls his head down and spends the whole blowjob growling praise at him. 

_ Beautiful. So needy. You know me so well. You're perfect. _

He doesn't even have to ask. Jason already knows what he wants, pulling him off in time to finish all over his face. 

"So much for the shower," Percy hears himself mumble, but his ears are roaring a little and he's passing into that hazy, floaty, familiar sensation that tells him he's in subspace. It's been ages since they got this intense–since they had _ time _to get this intense. 

"You could also frame it as giving me a blank canvas." Jason gets that way too, although people don't seem to talk about the other side as much. It comes out in his voice, the set of his shoulders, the pride on his face as he takes in the sight below him. "I don't think I've ever seen you this beautiful." 

"Yes, Sir." 

There's no other response. Contradicting him is impossible. Believing him used to be, but Percy's seen him sketch it out enough times to know he means it. 

Even aside from all that, that phrase _ does something _to Jason–trips some instinctive part of him that only gets to shine when he gets to be in charge. He'd spent so much of his early life being stifled, puppeted, pushed to choices he hadn't been allowed to make for himself, suffocating under the pressure of the expectations on him–and all the while his moon sign was ramming the walls of its prison, demanding to be heard. 

All he'd ever wanted was respect. Remembering that shoos away the last few snarls of the real world, the anxieties and spirals and everything else. If there's one thing Percy's still good at, it's handing over the reins and taking whatever he's given, and if there's one thing he knows for sure, it's that he can trust Jason to steer for a while, even on treacherous ground. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> String of emoji in case of display fail: rainbow, two hearts, kitchen knife, smiling face with hearts, face blowing a kiss, kiss mark, eggplant. (If I use one in a note or comment, it's just a heart, in purple because I very much like purple. It's the only non-text-based emoji I tend to use in personal communiques.)
> 
> WELP 
> 
> that sure happened 
> 
> A lot of the material there is stuff I had already outlined like, back in 2016, I just had to revise it a little for continuity with new material. It proceeded to devour my soul. 
> 
> I'm still not sure how I feel about breaking up chapters versus posting huge ones, so if anyone has any strong feelings one way or the other pls feel free to sound off. Longer ones take longer to write, but they might be more cohesive? I am waffling. 
> 
> Be kind to yourselves and know I am immensely fond of you, as always. 💜
> 
> oh gosh I completely forgot. next up: blood.
> 
> ETA: I waffled because I'm perpetually nervous about feeling like I'm asking for things, but I think I might need a beta, at this point. I'm losing track of my plot threads now that it's a monster of a project. >>; I also find that my eyes are starting to glaze over when I'm in the revising stage, and I'm pretty sure I'm missing word repetition. I'm good on SPAG stuff, aside from autocomplete typos or my brain skipping words or things like that, but I'm not so good at keeping continuities perfectly straight. <s>or anything, rimshot</s> I also have a terrible habit of talking myself in circles and referencing things that don't make sense outside of my head, which is becoming an increasingly bigger problem the more threads I have to lose track of. >>; 
> 
> If this sounds like something you think you can handle and that interests you, email me!


	10. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico is quite possibly the best spotter in the universe, both in bed and out. At this point, Jason and Percy owe him a goddamn parade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahaha someday I will write a digestible chapter again but today is not that day 8D;; 
> 
> Another potentially triggery one! See end for spoiler.

"I am about two seconds away from putting them both in the corner." 

"WOOF!"

Spoken before Will even has a chance to close the van door. He makes a sympathetic noise as he leans over to deliver his usual greeting—an ear-ruffle for Mrs. O'Leary and a peck on the nose for Nico, who, like always, scrunches it up in response. 

The dusting of freckles has gotten a lot more prominent recently, now that he's been spending more time on yard work. Will's tried to tell him how cute it is, which netted his own threats of corner time; though prone to making them, Nico rarely follows through, and only with Percy, when he seems to need it. 

"I take it they worked it out, since you're picking me up instead of calling me a cab?" 

"I left them on the couch watching Hell's Kitchen. I guess Percy has a crush on Gordon Ramsay, and Jason's trying to make the cock cage as uncomfortable as possible." 

"Not a single word of that statement surprises me." Will smirks into the rearview mirror. "Which means it's up to us to finish screwing Percy's head on straight." 

He won't be okay until he's had enough physical pain to drown out the emotional, and just like Nico, has a thing for blondes who can kick his ass, but Jason is way too tender-hearted to have pulled his sadistic side within reach by now and would feel even worse leaving Percy to his own demons. Nico follows Will's internal logic like usual, smirking back in the buttery light. 

"I'd lay money on it. I'm less sure Jason will let anyone near him without growling, though, at least for the next few days."

"Don't let them forget how much they owe you." 

Suddenly, the street lamps are casting the tiredness on Nico's face into sharp relief, and as much as he loves them—as much as _ Nico  _ loves them, even if he's reticent to admit it sometimes—Will finds irritation rising in the back of his throat, along with a fervent desire to knock their housemates' heads together. 

"He promised he'd buy me proper limoncello." Nico smirks. "I quote: 'we would be fucked without you'." 

"They would, and I'm glad at least one of them appreciates it." 

"Oh, Percy made promises too, I just don't want to go into detail about them while I'm driving." 

"Of course he did." Will relaxes into the seat and rests his hand on Nico's thigh. "It better be a damn good blowjob anyway." 

Having been on the receiving end a few times himself, Will knows  _ exactly  _ how good Percy is at sucking cock, but that doesn't mean he has to go easy on the guy. Percy would probably be disappointed if he tried. 

Dinner is takeout again, this time from a Thai restaurant in the center of town. After the bustle of the cities Will grew up in, the closeness of their new community is almost jarring, but whenever someone asks how Jason's knee is doing or if Mrs. O'Leary's had her puppies yet or how they liked the homegrown heirloom tomatoes they'd been given in exchange for Percy's help with a flat tire that one time, he gets a little more used to it.

By the time they get back to the house, Mrs. O'Leary has fallen asleep, her snores deafening in the enclosed space of the van. Upon waking, she seems a little disoriented, but she shakes it off—literally—once she's out of the van, her collar jangling. This time, Will takes care of getting the food in while she gets her zoomies out, supervised by Nico's watchful eye. 

(Nico is quite possibly the best spotter in the universe, both in bed and out. At this point, Jason and Percy owe him a goddamn parade.) 

"...never going to tell you you're wrong for having insecurities, but—"

Soft voices, half-audible, filter into the front hall. Usually, Percy would meet them at the door with a wide grin (and for Nico, an enthusiastic kiss), but neither he nor Jason seem to notice they have company until Mrs. O'Leary bounds into the living room, barking excitedly. 

Nico, shutting the door behind him, gives Will a look that says a novel as they split off. 

—

"...I want you to tell the awful voice in your head that it doesn't get to overrule my authority." 

They're pretty much in the same position Nico left them, Jason lying on his back on the couch and playing with Percy's hair while Percy kneels on a cushion on the floor, head on Jason's thigh and pretty face red from tears, naked except for the locking chain and leather around his neck. The differences lie in the hand stroking Mrs. O'Leary's neck as she dozes off behind him, the softness of his dick, and the cage in Jason's other hand, which makes the problem apparent.

Jason notices first that they're not alone, and pleading celestine eyes do something tremulous to Nico's insides as they transmit a nonverbal cue. Nico takes it, stepping closer to where Percy's curling in on himself, and tries not to think about the staticky thrill that always comes from doing what Jason told him to.

"You know it's not up to you whether you deserve a reward, little slut." 

Percy startles so hard at the sound it almost looks like it gives him whiplash. 

"I'm awake," he jokes, clutching at his chest. Jason winces, and Nico barely stops himself from doing the same.

It probably bothers  _ them _ more than it bothers  _ him _ —he's used to it by now and barely even registers his own hypervigilance anymore, cemented into his nervous system by growing up under constant threat of assault. Which is its own kind of horrifying, but all they can do is look out for him now, and try to keep him steady when it catches up to him.

"Two against one, love," Jason murmurs, once Percy's settled back onto his thigh. "You're outnumbered." 

" _ Three  _ against one," Will corrects from the kitchen. The guilt settles back down into Nico's subconscious where it belongs, chased off by his husband's fond, familiar voice. 

"Fuck you guys," Percy mumbles after a minute, lips quirking into a shadow of a smile. "When you put it like that, you're making it awfully hard for me to keep beating myself up." 

"That's the idea." Nico takes a seat on the floor next to Percy, ignoring the way those fluttery feelings intensify at the sight of Jason looking down at them with something sentimental and proud. "You also know your dom has a forced orgasm kink, and I'm sure a sweet thing like you can understand he needed it as much as your cock did." 

"Did you get curry? I'm kind of in the mood for something spicy." 

"You're  _ always _ in the mood for something spicy," Nico deadpans back, tugging on Percy's hair. "And yes, but don't change the subject." 

Percy, caught out, gives a slightly-wan and lopsided smile. "Why shouldn't I?" 

"Because you're going to feel worse if you try to be a brat when you're in this particular mood." 

Jason, per usual, is a fucking mind-reader, but it's less unsettling when it's directed at someone else. Nico slings an arm around Percy's shoulders and lets himself bask in the feeling of being snuggled up to, in the smell of shampoo and sweat and sex and the heat of the hand that curls against his chest.

"I kind of hate when you gang up on me in this context." Muffled in Nico's collarbone, Percy's voice is small and soft, and blessedly a little less raw. "But I know it's good for me, so I still appreciate it." 

"Good boy," Nico tells him, pressing lips to his dark hair. "We're all very proud of you, and I hope you know that." 

Percy responds the same way every time, like he's never heard it before and can't understand why anyone would think that way of him. That's one of the reasons they do this—without it, he ends up trying to make himself smaller and smaller in an attempt to match his atrocious self-image, no matter how many times he's heard those exact words already.

"I—"

Hell, he's  _ still _ prone to it sometimes. That much is clear from the way he's chewing on his lip, eyes going bright, as he tries again in a shaky half-whisper. 

"I'm not—"

"You are human and you need to be loved, just like everybody else does."

Low and rumbling and cutting off whatever protest had been in the works. After nearly six years of disuse, Jason's pretty rusty, but there's something about a voice that deep that pours over the ears like honey, slow and sweet, and makes it hard to focus on anything else. 

"Sometimes I forget you're as gothy as this one." 

The smirk when Percy leans up is almost as cute as the brief kiss he uses to signify which  _ 'one' _ he's talking about. Nico smiles against it, feels Percy smiling wider too, his lips chapped and a little raw. (Hypocrite.) 

The shivering is probably because he's chilly without any clothes on, so before Jason, watching like a bird of prey for any twitch of discomfort, can wig out about it, Nico shrugs off his sweatshirt and wraps it around Percy's broad, bare shoulders.

"Which is impressive, given how much we both like The Smiths."

"In my defense, Morrissey wasn't exactly known for wearing powder blue polos, khakis and argyle socks." 

"Bunny, aren't  _ you _ the one who tells everyone who will listen that they shouldn't pay attention to his preppy clothes because he's a stealth goth who auditioned for Sweeney Todd with 'Poor Jack'?" 

Will pokes his head around the doorway, a stack of plates in one arm, the takeout bag in the other and a relaxed, easy affection on his face. Quick to protect, never pulling his punches, but just as quick to forgive, and driving it home with an old pet name he borrowed from Jason and saves for special occasions.

He joins them on the floor and passes a greenie to Mrs. O'Leary, who rouses, whining, at the smell of chili oil and basil and chicken. Percy, already so much looser, stretches out until his head is in Will's lap and the rest of him is across Nico's. 

"I tell everyone who will listen that he's a stealth goth who saw The Nightmare Before Christmas for the first time in my living room _ , immediately _ keyed in on 'Poor Jack' for his audition song, and landed the title role with no competition whatsoever." 

"It was really something," Nico agrees, watching with some unnameable pleasure as Jason goes pink. "Everyone in your slot was talking about it. I had it stuck in my head for a week." 

He'd been the student intern that year and was in the room for it, listening in awe as Jason shook rafters the auditorium didn't even have, Thalia beaming in the next chair over with so much pride she might as well have been producing a spotlight. Mr. D, as rough and irritable as he was, had been unable to find anything to criticize, and like Percy said, never even considered anyone else for the part. 

Jason, as with everything, tends to demure, but it's still a shame he didn't get a chance to focus on what he actually wanted to do before shredding most of the connective tissue in his knee and ensuring that it was out of the question. He'd been a gifted dancer, too, particularly the ballet he'd only been allowed to take in service of flexibility and strength training.

Trying to get into Cornell like his life depended on it had been a double-edged sword. Motivated by urgency, he'd managed to excel at everything that had been packed into his schedule like commuters on a bullet train at rush hour, but by mid-October of junior year he'd been plagued with chronic insomnia and increasingly frequent panic attacks and constant pain in his gut and joints. Like always, he'd used the stress to push himself to even greater heights, but it came at a cost he's still feeling. 

That  _ Nico's  _ still feeling, the memory stark as the contrast had been between the exhausted pallor of Jason's face and the black dye Thalia had put in his hair. It washed him out all on its own—anything darker than medium navy is too harsh against his fair coloring—but he'd been so sick by tech week it wouldn't have mattered anyway. 

( _ "Shit—Sorry—I forgot my headset. I didn't mean to—" _

_ "You're fine. Third time I've had to put my head between my knees today. Someone besides Percy was bound to notice eventually."  _

_ "Basically, he's not going to have time to sleep tomorrow between the show and the game." _

_ "Which sucks, because I've been awake for almost forty hours cramming for my makeup test on Monday." _

_ "...I was about to make a joke that at least your stage makeup looks really good, but you're not in it yet, are you." _

_ "I doubt Benjamin Barker got much sleep anyway. It's more realistic if my hair's falling out a little.") _

"...most certainly is  _ not  _ exaggerating. I was one of the people in your slot he's talking about. You gave me and Cecil and Lou Ellen, like, three days of lunch room conversation." 

Will passes Jason a plate piled with noodles, the faintest bit wobbly. His dominant hand is occupied, warming Nico's skin with the heat of the ring around his finger. Whatever Jason's response was, it blipped right past without registering, but Will always notices the second Nico gets lost in thought, and never misses a beat in taking the wheel when he has to. 

Jason frowns, opens his mouth—

"Just because it's  _ uncommon _ doesn't mean it's  _ impressive _ —"

—and maybe Nico missed some of it, but they've had this conversation before, and he basically knows how it goes and what his role is: putting the brakes on that insidious, hypercritical perfectionism.

"You're right. It's not  _ where  _ your range is that's worth noting—what's impressive is the size, strength and accuracy of it. The only person I can think of who can go lower is Mike." 

His brother in law, an Olympic archer with two gold medals under his belt and a basso profundo that could have gotten him into opera if he'd wanted, opened his senior year as Judge Turpin, and was partly responsible for the rock-solid foundation of supporting cast members that kept Jason from vibrating out of his skin from the pressure. He's living in Greece now, and he'd probably argue back just as firmly as Nico does.

"Which makes your  _ ridiculous _ upper extension even more noteworthy," Will adds. "Can you still hit a G sharp?" 

Percy perks up—Nico can practically  _ see  _ his ears flicking—and before any further protest can be levied, he's grinning like he just came across a birdbath full of cream. 

"Analogously, the  _ upper extension  _ of his  _ size _ and  _ strength _ hits a G  _ very  _ sharp, all the time, with _ impeccable  _ accuracy." 

"Well played."

Will reaches down for a high-five, grinning over the sounds of hacking and spluttering from the couch.

"Don't encourage him to make me laugh when I'm eating pad kee mao," Jason croaks around the bite of food he inhaled. Nico kind of gets it, his own ears going hot, but if he's honest with himself, the ability to read smut into just about any situation is part of Percy's charm.

It's hard to even quantify the sense of relief it brings, after last night, to see Jason red-faced and watery-eyed for reasons that have nothing to do with emotional anguish.

"Don't eat pad kee mao around him if you're going to laugh that easily at his dirty jokes. Actually, you probably shouldn't be eating it anyway." 

It's a lot easier to make fun of him for trying to push beyond his own spice tolerance, lower than he'd prefer because it aggravates his stomach when he doesn't strictly moderate his intake; after all the fussing he does over the rest of them, it's only fair that Nico gets to nag him about his eating habits sometimes, too.

(Jason narrows his eyes, and all of a sudden it makes perfect sense that Percy likes agitating him so much—but that's something Later Nico can deal with.)

"Yes, I can still hit a G sharp. Barely." 

Pointed and fake-stern, but Jason can't quite keep his eyes from flickering back to Percy, the slightest bit tense with a worry that Nico knows far too well. 

Percy has apparently managed to shut up that voice from earlier, though, or at least reduced it to petulant grumbling. He smiles sweetly with an air of equally-feigned innocence as he steals a spring roll off the plate Nico's loading for himself, and it gets even sweeter when Will retaliates by rapping his knuckles with a spoon.

"I'm just saying Sir shouldn't sell himself short, in either definition of 'G' we're using." He punctuates it by biting the roll in half. Jason doesn't miss a beat and drops into the same timbre he used onstage, the new alluring edge honed by subsequent years of practice. 

"You are  _ incredibly _ biased." 

"And  _ you _ are cheating by using The Voice on me in my compromised state. Sir." 

"Twist my arm, why don't you." 

And there's the other reason for the games they play—Jason, so chronically tense he's forgotten how to relax his shoulders any other way, sliding into the role of protector and leader like a hot soak after a long, rainy day. It's so thorough it's catching.

"He should put his mouth to better use," Nico suggests, largely for the way it makes Jason smile, comfortable and a little wicked. 

"Agreed. Since he's got such a clever tongue, I'm sure he can figure out how to eat his dinner without using his hands." 

Percy  _ beams,  _ and Jason's smile is no dimmer. The atmosphere feels ten degrees warmer. 

"Challenge accepted, Sir." 

—

"...swear sometimes I can  _ still  _ taste it—" 

"Whose bright idea was it to put grape flavoring  _ and  _ cocoa powder in them anyway? And I'm one of those weirdos who  _ likes _ fake grape flavoring!" 

"Cocoa makes it redder, but they should have done peppermint. At least it would have matched, flavor-profile-wise." 

"Yes, babe, we all know how you feel about flavor profiles, but this transcends bad cooking—"

Nico, lithe and relaxed— _ finally _ —against the couch, smiles down at Percy with a powerful affection he never directs towards anyone else. 

"Less blood cap talk, more finishing your food, unless you want to be here all night."

The rest of them were done ages ago, dishes already in the sink, but given the handicap Percy's clipping along at a pretty good pace, despite the frequent interruptions. 

"You know, Nico, you could have just gotten your own curry." 

Jason's sounding a little froggy still, but it really is amazing how something as simple as watching someone lick his boyfriend's jaw so easily mellows him out. Not that Will doesn't understand the feeling, arm hairs standing on end as Nico straightens up and Percy takes a quick break to quiver on the floor in the aftermath.

"He could have, but that wouldn't have been any fun for us." 

The look Jason gives him is intimately familiar, another wordless conversation like they always have in this situation. Something about it slots the pieces into place—

"Knives!" 

—and he's blurting it out with no context, which gets him confused looks from Nico and Percy, but all Jason does is smile wider, eyes sparking with understanding and anticipation. 

"I doubt it would be much help." Nico raises an eyebrow at Percy, who's tilting his head like a cat in equal befuddlement. "Isn't he better off just using his teeth?" 

"Not that kind of knife," Jason clarifies before Will has a chance to. "Technically, they're scalpels, aren't they?" 

The moment of recognition from the remaining two is beautifully in sync—Nico breaking into a vicious grin and Percy crawling over to lay his head in Will's lap again, expression just the same. 

"I'm not gonna lie, I've been thinking about it since we started talking about Sweeney. And before you scold me for not saying anything, I was going to ask tomorrow." 

Years ago, somewhere around seventh grade, Will, like everyone else in their class, had a crush on Percy that rivaled Nico's—the only real difference is that he wasn't drowning in an ocean of traumatic grief and Catholic guilt, which made it exponentially easier to let it fizzle out on its own. Getting over Percy was a necessary hump to where they are now, knocking him off the pedestal of the Cool Older Guy and placing him in the same category as everyone else: vulnerable, flawed, and attainable. 

It's a completely different feeling now, for both of them. In Will's case, it's a lot like his mom's relationship with Kayla's and  _ exactly  _ like his own relationship with Jason, much more intimate than friends but on an entirely different plane from romance; for Nico, it was the realization that what he'd been reading all that time as a fierce passion for leadership, something similar to Jason's style, was actually the same desperation to please that made Percy so subby—and that it was a lot more fun to be in the driver's seat with him anyway.

They may have started from and ended in different places, but they both get the same little flare of satisfaction on behalf of their younger, twitterpated selves every time Percy curls in against them, overflowing with adoration twice as intense as anything either of them had imagined. 

"Which is why you're lucky to have us." 

As infuriating as his temper is sometimes, Percy means better and tries harder than almost anyone, and it shows in how forcefully he hurls himself into the performance of it—and, heartbreakingly, his stubborn inability to accept that he has needs and he's allowed to ask for them to be met. Will brushes a strand of hair behind his ear. "So we can stop you from pretending you're done when you're not, and so we can take over when Jason's out of the lineup." 

"I owe you two my goddamn soul at this point," Jason agrees, somber. He's worse than Percy is sometimes, but before Will can throw him a Look—capital L—Nico beats him to it with a long-suffering eye-roll. 

"Then stop saying so and do something about it." 

(What he  _ means _ is the fact that Jason still manages to convince himself it doesn't count as having a shitty self-image if he's decided he failed at something, and from the cowed half-smile, Jason's aware of it too.) 

"In that case, I hereby give you enthusiastic permission to do whatever the fuck my sub wants you to do to him, as an expression of my unending gratitude." 

Percy makes a noise against Will's thigh that sounds suspiciously like purring, and Nico gets that look on his face and straightening of his spine that says that if he had fur, it'd be standing on end. 

Then he meets Will's eyes, dark and knowing and brimming with the same relief that's settled around all of them. 

"I'll hold, you cut." 

—

"Alright. What are we doing?" 

Percy tilts his head up to look over at Jason, breathless. His hair, finally dry, brushes against Nico's shoulder. Jason looks back down at him, takes a second to meet Nico's eyes, and leans over to whisper something in Will's ear. 

Nico tightens his arms around Percy's waist, because he can feel the rapid heartbeat fluttering under his hand and the shaky exhale against his throat makes him shiver. His husband isn't helping, having broken into a wide, conspiratorial smirk at whatever Jason suggested. 

"You remember the rules." 

Percy nods as Will puts on his gloves, hisses at the sudden sensation of an alcohol wipe along the inside of his thigh. 

"My safeword is riptide and I use it the second I need to, no exceptions." 

"Good boy," Nico murmurs, something in him thrilling at how Percy goes loose and mushy against him. Jason gives them a warm, fond glance, lacing his fingers with Percy's.

Will doesn't give warning first, because Percy gets annoyed if he knows when it's coming. The startled cry never gets any less exciting. 

Jason's right—Percy looks  _ incredible  _ in red, whether it's leather or lace or his own blood welling to the surface of his blush-rose skin like droplets of garnet, and  _ especially  _ the way his face flushes at the sting of another disinfecting wipe. It's almost as good as the pitch of his voice, well above Jason's but still lower than Nico's lyric tenor; full and warm and rich with emotion. 

"Please—" 

Breathed out, cut off by the scalpel biting into his thigh a second time. Jason leans in, sliding an arm around Nico's shoulders. 

"Feel good?" 

Quiet, just as warm and emotive. Jason's cagey about it, especially out of the house, but he's one of the most intensely passionate people Nico knows. Still waters run deep, indeed; the shield he puts up over the blue hole of his emotions is as smooth as glass.

Will leaves another cut and Percy whimpers against Nico's throat, legs parting in what looks like a reflex. He's half-hard, which is enough to bely his exhaustion; ordinarily by now he'd be flat against his stomach. 

"Yeah— _ fuck  _ yeah." 

"Good." This time it comes from Will. Whatever he's doing, it seems to be words—closer inspection reveals his phone open next to him, text on the screen Nico can't really see from this angle. 

(He's got a pretty good idea, though, knowing both of the insufferable blondes in his life as well as he does.) 

"You're doing so well." Soft, stirring Percy's hair. Jason hums in agreement and Percy makes a noise like a sob. 

"Don't st—"

"Not planning on it until this is done. We're probably less than a quarter of the way there." 

Will's method of domination is measured and even and bright, like the rays of the sun after a long winter coaxing open an even more spectacular bloom. It's not as pretend-harsh as Nico's or as all-consuming as Jason's, but Percy responds to the positivity like he was raised in the dark and he's only just feeling real heat. 

"Nnnnh…" 

Attentive and focused, Will pauses to glance down at Percy's cock—hard again now—and back up at Nico with a wordless suggestion. 

Nico reaches out his right hand, occupying the left by running it through Percy's hair. "Lube." 

Jason, smiling, passes over a bottle from the bedside table. Nico lets go of Percy's hair and loops an arm around his chest again, so he can pour some in his palm and stroke, hard, over hot skin. 

Percy muffles a strangled groan against Nico's collarbone and bucks into the contact. He's still bleeding a little, though not nearly as much as he could be thanks to Will's immediate pressure and slowly growing pile of stained gauze. Jason makes an approving sound, and Nico can practically see the electricity that runs through the look he exchanges with Will. 

"Maybe a third now."

Another quick cut, another sweet, hungry noise in response. Will has gauging Percy's tolerance down to an exact science— actually, that's true for all of them. He's not afraid to use his powers, either, flicking his gaze between them to make sure they're all still on the same page, like he does every time. 

"It looks awesome already." 

Will blows Nico a kiss at the compliment, and at the same time Percy tips his head back and twitches gently in Nico's hand. 

"Yeah?" 

"It always does when it's on you, but I'm really liking the way this one's turning out." 

A 'B', followed by an 'E', and Will adds another vertical line next to it.  _ B. E. L.  _

Percy isn't looking, but Nico sees the O, four neat little strokes that form a diamond. Of course. It couldn't possibly have been anything else. 

By the time Will gets to the last letter, Nico's brought Percy to the edge three times and Jason's melted alongside them, staring at the rapid rise and fall of Percy's chest with rapt attention.

"One more " he says, low and quiet. Percy gasps, holding himself so tightly he's trembling. 

"Relax for me," Will instructs. Nico decides to help, curling his fingers around a lock of Percy's hair and pulling tight. 

" _ Please _ —" 

"Look at me, sweet boy." 

Something about it makes Nico turn as well, meeting Jason's eyes for a fleeting second. 

"Sir…" 

Percy was past coherence three letters ago. Nico tightens the arm around him.  _ _

"I want you to come on the last cut." 

For a second, it sounds too risky, given the state Percy was in when they got home—but then he sags against Nico, pliant.  _ Obedient.  _ He's in that place that Jason recognizes before anyone else, including Percy, where the content of the order doesn't matter anymore as long as it's been given. 

"Yessir—" 

Nico makes eye contact with Will, just to make sure they're synced, and at the same time that the blade slips into Percy's skin he tightens and speeds up his grip— 

"A _ aah!"  _

—and Jason has to reach over and help hold Percy down so Will can press another gauze pad to the wound and hold it firm against the thrashing. 

Weak and dry, thoroughly drained in more than one way. For the first time in two days, he looks truly, completely happy. 

"Do you want to see before I bandage it up?" Will murmurs, after giving him a minute to catch his breath. 

"Depends," Percy mumbles, stretching his arms above his head. "Can I read it?" 

"I tried to make it easy." 

Nico straightens a little to help him prop himself up, so he can look down at the inside of his thigh while the disinfectant and adhesive are being set out beside him. 

A single word, all caps. _ BELOVED.  _

"...Fuck you guys." 

It's the second time tonight, but now, the soft sniffling is accompanied by a warm, damn near euphoric smile. 

"I mean, I'd let you, but we're both bottoms, so it's moot." 

Will uses the distraction of the joke to swipe another soaked pad over the shallow cuts. Percy hisses at the sting, and since there are extenuating circumstances, Nico elects not to give him any shit for biting him in the process.

"No, we're not. I'm a vers." 

If he didn't know Will as well as he does, Nico wouldn't have even noticed the shock at that statement; his hands don't even stutter, moving with the same practiced efficiency they always do, and all that really happens outwardly is a slight widening of ocean-blue eyes. 

"I'm the one with the exclusive preference," Jason elaborates, a little sheepish. "We tried it a few years ago. Once." 

"It didn't go very well, I take it?"

It's honestly more surprising that it hasn't come up before now—but then again, Will rarely actually sleeps with anyone but Nico, mostly keeping to the sidelines and catching up later on. Percy snorts into Nico's bicep and kisses it after, which kind of makes up for the teeth marks. 

"You know that scene from Ferris Bueller where they're talking about producing diamonds by sticking lumps of coal up Cameron's ass?" 

"That, but literally." Jason grimaces. "Which is not fun for anyone involved." 

"I think I almost lost circulation in those fingers." Apparently still riding the high, Percy reaches over with a dazzling smile to lace his hand with Jason's. "It's fine, though. Sex with a romantic power top more than makes up for it. You play me like a Juilliard student with a stradivarius. I wouldn't give you up even if it meant I never got to top anyone ever again." 

Finally, Jason loses the last bit of tension in his broad shoulders. Will notices it too, it seems, and after the last bit of medical tape goes into place, he stretches out on Percy's other side like a puma. 

"With the big guy's permission, it seems like you've got a lot to make up for." 

"You really think there's a chance I  _ won't  _ get off on watching him fuck you?" 

A burst of laughter spills, unbidden, from Nico's mouth. It seems it's contagious, since Percy follows right after.

"I'm out of practice, in that I haven't done it since our act-three breakup." 

Jason winces, but Percy notices, and lays a reassuring hand on his stomach. 

"Which was due to outside influences that neither of us were at fault for," he adds, soft and gentle. Now that he's in his happy place, the transition into providing aftercare for Jason is seamless, and beautiful to watch. 

"Cosigned." Because Jason starts to relax a little, and then a little more at the squeeze Nico gives his shoulder. "You were backed into a corner by a horde of rabid wolverines and had to split off for a while to keep their attention diverted." 

"Exactly." 

"You're making it awfully hard for me to keep beating myself up," Jason quotes back to Percy, who doesn't miss a beat. 

"That's the idea." 

Will leans across Percy and Nico to add a third point of physical contact, wrapping his fingers around Jason's wrist. 

"We're awfully proud of you too, Supes." 

The smile it earns makes Nico's heart climb up into his throat. 

"Either way, the obvious solution is to lean into that student-teacher kink you have," Jason concedes. It's directed at Will, for good reason. 

"You're in luck, gattino," Nico affirms, his head filled with the memory of ropes around his wrist, keeping him restrained in a desk chair while Will growled instructions above him in a bright, heated baritone, similar in pitch to Percy's. "He's  _ excellent _ in that role." 

"It's true." Will's return smirk is downright fucking smug, but he's earned bragging rights through years of perfecting his technique. "Don't worry, I won't go easy on you." 

Percy shuts his eyes, his expression blissful. 

"You know I wouldn't have it any other way." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains cutting with a scalpel, though not in a self-injurious way. 
> 
> \-- 
> 
> I hadn't written a chapter with Will and Nico's POV in a while, and I figured who better than Will to do something that requires first aid? I don't hate the way this turned out, honestly. For once. (maybe it's the high of ousting The Cheeto Who Shall Remain Nameless?) 
> 
> I also took this chance to really lean hard into my musical theater background. I think it's entirely reasonable for all three of the big three boys to be triple threats. :> 
> 
> Briefly: I've gotten multiple people apologizing for their reviews because they think they're not making sense or they're bad at wording things, and I just want you all to know that anyone who complains about receiving gushing praise is being a serious dillweed and needs to rethink their priorities. I love every single one. You could send me nothing more than a keysmash and it would still make my day! 
> 
> Lastly, shoutout to Beck for the Ferris Bueller reference. :D (I feel like I'm forgetting another easter egg...I'll fix it if I remember, ahem.) || THE LIMONCELLO, GOD, SELF
> 
> Be kind to yourself and others and I will see you fantabulous pumpkins next time! 💜
> 
> I again forgot to mention: next up is tattoos.


End file.
